


white and lilac and golden

by shameless_rogue



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Addiction recovery, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Band Fic, Childhood Memories, Drug Addiction, Family Reunions, Feels, Healthy Relationships, I'll just stop with the tags now before I type the whole fic out again, M/M, Mild Smut, Past Drug Use, Personality Development, Reunions, Slow Burn, Smut, Sobering up, Sort Of, a bit of smut, all kinds of addictions to be honest, band au, because of both parties being high, past dubious consent, some battling with internalized homophobia, this is too long not to be called slow burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2020-03-08 03:59:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 29,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18886735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shameless_rogue/pseuds/shameless_rogue
Summary: "So that’s the Séance. Grey fog and shining lights and heavy guitars and wordless singing, and Diego knows, he knows that there are other people on the stage and he knows that there are other people in the room, but frankly, he doesn’t give a shit. He’s not even there, in that goddamned club with its heavy air and filthy urinals. He’s not even then."Recovering addict Diego Hargreeves goes to find his old things. His old band, certainly. His old family, probably. His never-quite-boyfriend, hopefully.





	white and lilac and golden

It’s dark. God it’s dark, and noisy, and way too hot and heavy with smoke. It smells sweet like weed and sour like sweat, and when he opens his mouth to catch his breath, Diego could swear the air tastes the same.

One deep breath. Two. Three. Stepping farther inside, letting the door slam shut behind him, letting it close with a loud thud and a light wave of cool breeze against his back. Taking in the noises—people shouting, people chattering, glasses clinking, glasses shattering—and taking in the sight. The inside of a nightclub he hasn’t been to before but one that looks all too familiar to him—bar to the right, loo to the left, stage in the far end of the room, right opposite the entrance, built from stacked-up, nailed-together floorboards. It’s a small thing, and a fragile one; tonight, Diego wouldn’t dare step on it.

He takes another step, and another again. He reaches the bar before he could find a different path through the crowd, gets elbowed in the ribs while he’s staring at the endless list of drinks taped to the wall, more mesmerized than frightened for a second; and then suddenly he’s next in line and the bartender leans to him, forearms on the bar, an ear pressed close to his mouth so she can hear him over the noise. It’s loud now; it’s louder now than it was before. The band seems to have started tuning the guitars, and the sharp chords keep finding their way to Diego, to his ears, through his ears, right into his brain.

“I,” he says, then starts again when the bartender pulls away and signals him that she’s really, very sorry but can’t hear shit. “I don’t want anything, thanks. Sorry.”

She stares at him for another second and her expression doesn’t make it fully clear whether it’s not hearing or not understanding that’s got her so confused; but then she’s turning away, and so is Diego, walking away from the bar and into the crowd.

He arrived just when the band was supposed to start playing, so he figures he still has at least half an hour until they actually do. He goes to explore the place, starting with the loo, pees while standing uncomfortably close to somebody who seems to be throwing up into one of the urinals, fights the urge to help him and actually manages to win said fight by reminding himself that tonight, he’s got other people to save; he walks through the crowd again to get away from the smell of shit and piss and vomit and sex, wondering why anybody would want to do all of those things in the very same bathroom stall and probably at the very same time, too; he stands with his arms folded over his chest and his back against the cool brick wall, but then he realizes how close to the bar he’s standing and how strongly the smell of alcohol is burning through his nostrils; so he walks again, closer to the stage, trying to hide among a group of people who smell more like sweat and less like booze.

He’s not planning to be seen, so he’s not expecting to be seen, either. He gave an embarrassingly huge amount of thought to what he should be wearing tonight to melt into the crowd just the way he wants to, not standing out by being too extravagant, not standing out by being not. So now he’s wearing black. Most of the time, he’s wearing black; but come on, he left his boots uncleaned just for tonight on purpose. He’s more than satisfied with the end result, and actually feels nearly invisible for a very long time, right until the moment when somebody walks up to him and throws an arm around his waist, pulling him closer and leaning to his ear.

Diego reaches for his knife instinctively. Diego reminds himself that the only reason he has his knife on him is the emotional support it provides, and that he’s determined not to use it ever again. Diego lets the knife sink back into his pocket.

“Hello there, handsome,” a voice murmurs into his ear. Diego silently compliments its owner on the fact that he manages to speak in a tone that implies murmuring even though he has to practically shout over the sound of the drums. The drums have joined in at some point.

“Hi,” he says, pulling away slightly. The arm around his waist lets him move, but stays right where it was before. He looks down at it—he can see the fingers, long fingers with black swirls tattooed on them; he can see the knuckles, two bruised and two perfectly clean—then he looks up, too. The man that’s hugging him is somewhat taller than him. Surprise, surprise. Diego hates it.

The man grins at him, a red flash of light twinkles over his teeth.

“Came here for the Séance, huh?”

“Yeah.” Diego tries to move again, but the man won’t let him this time.

“Me too,” he says, not particularly surprising Diego with that. It’s not like any other band is playing tonight. “Pretty good, that one. Love their bassist.”

“Cool,” Diego nods. The man grins at him, very much not caring about the lack of enthusiasm in his voice.

“That’s what I’m saying, man.” He inches closer, Diego inches away. He’s not going to punch the guy. He isn’t. He can’t punch everyone he’s not interested in. “So which is your favorite?”

“What?”

“Band member. Your favorite band member. Which one is it?”

Diego actually thinks for a second before he answers.

“The singer,” he says then, and the shadow of a smile begins to creep over his lips, he can feel it. It’s not a particularly happy smile and it fades away soon enough, but it’s there for a second, it definitely is, and he shakes his head slowly at himself. “I think.”

The man’s hand finds its way down Diego’s waist, sliding over his hips, resting on top of them; but he doesn’t grab his ass and Diego, somewhere deep down, sort of appreciates that. He’s beginning to hate this guy less and less. He’s still going to tell him to fuck off soon enough, but now he’s almost convinced that it won’t be too awkward. The guy hasn’t done anything too bad.

“You’re pretty when you smile.”

Diego’s eyes are wide open in a second. He turns to the man with his whole body, stepping closer and glaring up at him, the movement fast enough to make him flinch away.

“What did you say?”

“I said your smile was pretty,” the guy repeats.

Diego’s fingers curve into a fist, on both of his hands, one by one, slowly enough so he can feel a sweet stretch in all of his joints, fast enough so the man’s eyes are drawn to it, too.

“Hey, dude,” he says, backing away now, his hands coming up in front of his chest. “Cool the fuck down, okay? I was just being nice.”

Diego takes a deep breath.

“Go be nice to someone else,” he says. And the man does, he backs away into the crowd, disappearing behind a group of teenagers, and Diego forces his fist open.

He didn’t hit him, and he’s proud of that. He wanted to hit him because he dared to think that that smile was for him, and he’s not proud of that. He hasn’t decided yet whether or not to be proud of who the smile was for.

It’s calm after the incident, as calm as it can be in a crowd of either overdressed or half-naked, either high or drunk to queasiness, either middle-aged or kid-looking people who are more shouting than talking over the dissonant sounds of a bunch of instruments. No one else comes to hit on him. No one else comes to talk to him, either. And he’s more than fine with that, that’s precisely the thing he’s been hoping to achieve, but now that he’s been noticed, he can’t help but feel a hint of worry that it might happen again. Not by anyone in the crowd. But by someone on the stage, maybe.

He’s come here to talk, that’s what he reminds himself of. He’s come here to talk, and the only reason he’ll be here to see the entire concert is that he’s not sure when it’s over and where the band might go afterwards. He’s not here to look. But he will look, and he might end up doing nothing more than look, and however hard he tries to, he can’t really lie to himself about that. And it’s making him frustrated, he can feel it, he can feel it creep down from his chest all the way into his hands; his fingers feel cold and numb and he wants to flex them and stretch them, he wants to feel them tense and relax and pop quietly at the joints; and then the room goes dark, darker than before, and he forgets about it halfway through the first movement.

It’s black now. It’s black all around him, so completely, utterly black, unbroken by the light of the reflectors, unbroken even by the smoldering ends of the cigarettes people have been smoking; the reflectors are turned off now and the cigarettes are put out, and the noises stop, too, leaving behind nothing but a quiet buzz in Diego’s ears. Everyone is breathing heavily, Diego can feel the others’ breath on his face, but otherwise it’s silent. Everyone knows to be silent. And then he hears something, the low purr of something electronic, he doesn’t know what it might be; and then the lights go up, slowly, shining less on the stage and more on the crowd, shedding a lavender-colored fog all over the room. And then there’s a shadow on the stage, the black shadow of a man, its outlines sharp against the light, its center melting away into it; and Diego stares, and Diego  _looks_ , because the sound he’s hearing is the man humming, and because the outlines he’s seeing are the ones he’s been missing. The lights go up with a sudden jolt, white and lilac and golden, and they are burning Diego’s eyes and illuminating the singer’s face, and good god, he’s still beautiful. And good god, he’s always been beautiful.

So that’s the Séance. Grey fog and shining lights and heavy guitars and wordless singing, and Diego knows, he knows that there are other people on the stage and he knows that there are other people in the room, but frankly, he doesn’t give a shit. Around him, people are dancing, pulling each other into tight hugs and shoving each other against the damp walls; but he’s not moving and he knows he’s not going to move. He’s not even there, in that goddamned club with its heavy air and filthy urinals. He’s not even then. He’s years before that, it another club with the same heavy air and even worse urinals; but he’s nowhere near the urinals and he’s nowhere near the stage; he’s in one of the back rooms, and it’s sometime in the afternoon, very early in the evening, maybe, and they are free because they don’t have a gig that night, but he knows they wouldn’t care if they did.

“I’m so, so gonna give you a lap dance,” Klaus says, jumping on top of the bed and standing up as tall as he can. The mattress heaves and sinks under his weight and he has to press his palms against the ceiling to catch his balance, and he grins down at Diego as he steps closer to stand over him. He’s got his feet on each side of Diego’s hips. Diego’s got his hands on each side of the headboard. Klaus begins to move, thighs twisting and back arching, the movements of his limbs nothing more than long, blurred stripes of color, and Diego wants to touch, or maybe he wants to be touched, he can’t really tell the difference anymore, and he lifts his hands and the bonds cut into his wrists, a rusty piece of wire into the right, a slippery silken scarf into the left.

The concert is long. Diego only realizes that when he notices the people around him jumping less and less high, their voices growing more and more quiet; and he can see that they are getting tired but it’s not like they seem to notice. He doesn’t feel tired, either, but he supposes he looks tired, too. And Klaus, lips pressed against the microphone, pupils blown so wide Diego feels like, even from this distance, they could swallow him whole; Klaus looks fucking exhausted.

He always has, Diego has to remind himself. That doesn’t make it any better. But it doesn’t make it too bad, either, not bad enough for Diego to turn his gaze away. Even less so when Klaus, after what feels like hours of humming songs without any lyrics Diego could make out, finally starts speaking. With actual words.

“You guys hangin’ in there?” is all he says at first. He makes it sound more like an order than a question, and the crowd around Diego explodes again.

Klaus opens his eyes wider—opens them properly, that is; he’s been looking at them from under his half-closed eyelids the whole time, it was only his pupils that made his eyes appear more open—and lets his gaze wander over the room. It brushes over the crowd, from one side to the other and back again, sliding smoothly past Diego, leaving behind a hint of disappointment.

“Good,” he says, and clutches his microphone harder. “Now, you guys, I’m getting a little sleepy over here. Anyone got anything to help me with that?”

And of course someone’s got something. Most someones in the room have got something, but it’s a boy in the first row, young-looking and wasted as hell, who gets to hand his something over to Klaus. He places it on his palm and offers it to him, but Klaus clicks his tongue; lifts his index finger, even, to wave no at him.

“Uh-uh,” he murmurs. And it can’t be the first Séance the young-looking boy is at because he grins up at Klaus widely, then opens his mouth and drops the pill inside, only to catch it with his tongue and offer it up again. Klaus jumps off the stage, lands on one foot and with his arms spread wide in the air, searching for his balance with a worried expression on his face; he grins too when he finds it, curtseys while his audience is applauding him, and then his fingers are on the young boy’s chin and his mouth is on the young guy’s mouth, and what others see is two people kissing and a pill being snatched away, and what Diego sees is  _red_.

Diego sees golden, golden all around him. The walls are golden as the rays of the afternoon sun pours over them; Klaus’ skin is golden as the light of the countless candles dances over him. They’re burning incense, too, because that’s what Klaus has been into lately, and even the smell that fills Diego’s lungs feels heavy and golden and molten.

The smell didn’t have a color just a few minutes ago. But then Klaus kneeled down, his ass pressing against Diego’s cock, his cock pressing against Diego’s abs. When he leaned over him, there were two pills on his tongue; two little capsules that Diego knew were very sweet and very blue, and he forced Diego’s lips open with his index finger.

“One for me, one for you,” he murmured, and it sounded like everything Diego had ever wanted to hear. And then Klaus was kissing him, caressing his tongue with his own, letting the capsules stick to them both, pushing them into Diego’s mouth and snatching them away again, playing with them until they began to dissolve somewhere between their lips, playing with him until he was squirming, his fists clenching and his thighs tensing, the throbbing in his crotch in perfect sync with the throbbing under his temples.

Klaus has let go of the boy, a movement that Diego missed because he was too busy clawing his way out from underneath the pile of the memories he’d thought were long gone; but he doesn’t really mind not seeing it. He wouldn’t really mind never seeing that guy again. He straightens his fingers slowly, joint by joint, digit by digit, looking down at them and checking if it’s working; and when he looks back up, Klaus is climbing back on the stage, his eyebrows in a worried grimace when he, again, fights to regain his balance, his lips in a wide smile when he does.

“Oh, I can feel that now!” he exclaims, without the microphone but loud enough for the entire room to hear. He throws his arms into the air and turns around, one knee bending and one foot rising, his entire weight on the other side, on the tip of his toes. Diego notices only now that he’s not wearing any shoes. Of course he isn’t. His toenails are painted grey and purple, with no apparent logic in the order of the colors, and they are glittering softly in the harsh lights.

There’s a rhythm coming from the drums; the drummer must have moved but Diego wasn’t focusing on that. Klaus lifts the microphone and smiles into it, a soft huff escapes his lips and it’s amplified by the speakers immediately, filling the room in a slow wave of echoes.

“Can you feel it?” he whispers. And whatever it is that he’s supposed to feel, Diego knows that he could, he could if he only had a chance to get closer, to walk right to the edge of the stage, to reach out and grab Klaus’ hand, because he’s felt it. Back then, he felt it every single time when Klaus did; whatever Klaus did.

He takes half a step, freezes midway through it, and places his foot back right where it was.

Klaus pulls away and leaves Diego panting; he climbs off the bed, but more importantly off him, and walks to the shelf. It’s to the left—there isn’t much to see on the right, only the window with its old curtains that look like thin tablecloths and smell like naphthalene, the window with all that golden, golden sunshine billowing through it—and there’s a gramophone on top of it. Klaus holds the needle between two fingers and places it on the disc, it clicks into place with the tiniest sound that keeps on drumming in Diego’s ears anyway. Music starts playing, quiet and slow and gooey, it runs down the sides of the horn in thick, round drops and sticks to Klaus’ skin. He’s standing with his back to Diego, and he starts moving now; he’s dancing again just like he was on the bed, but this is different now, this is so much better, being farther away from him, knowing there will be no touching until he lets himself be touched. Diego groans, presses his wrists against his bonds, and Klaus doesn’t even spare him a glance. His arms are above his head, twisting and curling and flying around; his hips are, god,  _everywhere_ , arching and rolling and swirling around. He reaches for the button on his jeans, then, Diego can’t really see but thinks he can hear it pop open; and he’s stripping now, prying the skin tight pants off his legs, pulling the knee high socks off his feet; and Diego doesn’t know how and why someone can take off his socks in a way that leaves his cock so hard and his mouth so dry, but that’s just what it does. And Klaus is back on the bed now, kneeling above him, eyes shining with lust, thighs shining with sweat, and he unzips Diego’s jeans and he pulls down Diego’s boxers, and then he’s turning around and lowering himself, letting Diego’s cock slide into him; and it’s mostly pain that Diego feels at first, but then Klaus is moving, rolling his hips to the rhythm of the music again, spine curling and arms waving, and Diego’s staring at him with wide eyes, his ass, his back, the slowly forming stain between his shoulder blades where skin sticks to cloth and turns his top a darker, damper shade of grey. His muscles are straining, aching to be free. Klaus hums along to the music, and Diego realizes with a broken chuckle that no, he hasn’t actually stopped dancing.

He lets his eyelids sink a little lower, lets his head fall against the pillow, and he looks. Klaus is beautiful, all pale skin and bright sweat; and he seems to be in enough of a trance that he doesn’t notice when the music changes, only his movements become a little more heated; and he seems to be in enough of a trance that he doesn’t notice when Diego tugs at his bonds again, with actual determination this time, tearing the scarf off his wrist and feeling around on the nightstand with his free hand, grabbing his knife and cutting the wire in a heartbeat.

“You having fun, huh?” he whispers, and Klaus only lets out a quiet, satisfied murmur, but even without seeing his face, Diego can tell that he’s smirking, he can tell from the way the sound buzzes through both of their bodies. He rises from the mattress slowly, his abs straining with every inch he moves. “Good for you.”

And that’s when Klaus notices he’s freed himself, but he doesn’t really have the time to be surprised, or annoyed, or even neutral about it, because Diego’s fingers are around his throat and Diego’s arm is around his waist now, flipping him over, pressing him down on the mattress, pulling him up again, until they’re both standing on their knees, Diego’s chest pressed against Klaus’ back, and he’s thrusting into him without thinking about it, pulling him closer to meet his thrusts; and Klaus leans back into him, his back arching so he can rest his head on Diego’s shoulder, and Diego squeezes his throat harder, forcing his soft gaps to die away down in his chest, forcing his sharp cries to escape his lips ragged and hoarse; and their clothes stick to their skin and their skin sticks together, and when Klaus comes he’s laughing before he’s panting, kissing Diego’s neck and his jaw and his lips, and then he strips them both so they’re fully naked before he goes down on him.

*

Someone’s staring at him. Diego feels it before he knows it, and his head snaps up immediately, the apparent boner in his pants and the not much less apparent ache in his chest forgotten. He looks around but can’t seem to find whoever the stare, intense enough to burn a hole through his forehead and set fire to all his nerves, is coming from. That is, until he looks back at the stage, only to find Klaus’ pleasantly surprised gaze aimed back at him.

He looks pleasantly surprised now. Diego doubts this will still be the case once the concert is over and the effect of the pill he’s just taken wears out.

“Hi there,” he mouths, and Klaus winks at him. Then his attention is gone and so is the tension in Diego’s muscles, but he escapes anyway; he rushes to the loo, pushing anyone in his way aside, and he opens the first tap he can find to splash cold water in his face.

He stays like that for a few minutes, rubbing the sweat off his skin, with fast, frantic movements at first, then slowing down and stopping altogether, straightening up to stare at his reflection in the mirror.

It’s been so long. It’s been so damn long. He really wants a drink, and there are things that he wants more than said drink, and Klaus is not even the first in line. He’s not going to act out any of them, though. He’s been working on this. He knew before he came here that he’d have to work even harder after this visit. He’s not going to screw up now.

It all started with that goddamned competition. If Diego hadn’t gone there—but, well, he did. And so did six other people who were strangers to him when that day first began, the same six people he ended up calling his siblings a couple of months later.

The man’s name was Sir Reginald Hargreeves. His actual name was not, that was Reginald Hargreeves, simple as that, as simple as a name like this can be; the point is, the Sir wasn’t part of his actual name. That was just the stage name he liked using. The other thing he liked was classical music, and he had an upsettingly strong opinion about people who listened to anything other than that.

“To achieve anything that is worth achieving, you have to start at the very foundation of society,” he would sometimes say. “It is a weak foundation now, one that is easy to move. And you, as my Number One, are going to move it.”

He never said that to Diego, of course. He wasn’t Number One and he’d always known he’d never be, and that’s one of the more hopeless issues he’s been working on. But Reginald said these kinds of things to all of them, even if it was in a less personal and even less motivational way. They were going to make things right. Coach people back to the culture they’d been forgetting about. By, well, by playing classical music for other kids.

Said kids remained uninterested most of the time. And Reginald remained determined. He made them practice every day, all the hours they spent awake, except on Sundays, of course, when they had physical exercise to build their endurance for the concerts. Diego didn’t hate those as much. To be frank, he didn’t hate their music at first, either. None of them did. They wouldn’t have agreed to be adopted otherwise.

The competition Reginald collected them at was actually organized with this exact purpose: to help musically talented orphans find someone, a teacher, a foster, a master, who saw something worth keeping in them. And in Diego and in those six other kids, Reginald did. He found Diego with his acoustic guitar, he found Luther with his drums, he found Allison with her voice, he found Klaus with his piano, he found Five with his clarinet and he found Ben with his French horn. He also found Vanya with her violin, but he seemed to have forgotten about that quickly enough. And he talked to them until they were willing to work with him and he rehearsed with them until they saw that the thing they created together was worth creating; and once they said yes to the adoption and once they moved in with him, he switched methods.

Their name was The Umbrella Academy. No one knew why, and no one found it all that appealing, not even Luther. But their concerts drew in enough people to fill the largest concert halls all over the world; and even though no one knew why this happened, either, everyone found it pretty appealing. Well, Vanya obviously didn’t, but it’s not like she was there to say anything about it. And things were great, then things were okay, then things were bad but not too hard to get used to after a while; and then it got harder and harder and harder, until it felt like a blessing when Reginald unexpectedly died.

They were going to split up. They wanted to; most of them did, at least. Vanya left the very day it happened, coming back only for the twenty minutes it took to scatter Reginald’s ashes in the garden. And it was in the living room of the Academy—they called the house they lived in that, too; and they called the living room a living room, even though it looked a whole lot more like the strange mix of a concert hall, an unnecessarily expensive bar and a library, and it was large enough so all of these things fit inside perfectly well and there still was a bit of space left for Reginald’s countless hunting trophies—it was in the living room that Luther told them to stay.

He didn’t ask them, no; he told them. Diego remembers the anger he felt then to this day; the anger that was red and wet and hot, it burned his muscles and it boiled his lungs.

“You think you can tell us what to do?” he said, jumping to his feet and stepping to Luther. He felt small; he always did when he stood next to him. He didn’t care. He ignored the fact that he cared, at least. “I know this shit,” he gestured to himself, to Luther, to the grand piano standing in the middle of the room, “was important to Dad. But he’s gone for good. And his shit is sure as hell not important to me.”

Diego was seventeen at that time. They all were. He enjoyed swearing because Reginald had made sure to forbid them from ever doing it; and when he first decided to break that rule, he quickly found how it allowed his frustration to flow out of his body through his mouth. He knew nothing of all the other paths it could have taken.

Luther sighed, and that didn’t exactly help Diego calm down.

“Do I really have to do this?” he asked.

“Do what?”

“Explain to you why it’s important that we don’t let Dad’s legacy be forgotten.”

Diego was going to say something about his legacy being quite literally a pile of shit, but someone else spoke before he could.

“Yes, please,” Klaus said. Both Diego and Luther turned to him, and he threw one of his legs over the other where he was half-lying in an armchair. “Intrigue us.” His tone was light, genuinely curious and painfully mocking at the same time, there really was no way to know which, if either, he meant it to be, and Diego stills remembers having admired him for that.

Luther opened his mouth to say something, but Klaus interrupted him before he even started.

“Because,” he said, running a hand through his hair—it was way too long, Reginald had been going to have him go to the barber, “all I remember him being is a bitter and sadistic piece of shit, and I’d much rather not keep that legacy alive.”

“Klaus!” Allison snapped, and he leaned forward to stare at her with his eyebrows raised and his lips curiously parted.

“What is it, darling?”

“You’re being mean.”

“Well,” Klaus threw his hands in the air, his tone jumping an octave higher, “so was Reggie all his life, and who did ever tell him to stop it?”

Diego let out a chuckle and the others stopped staring at Klaus so they could stare at him instead. Except Five, who was too busy cleaning his nails with a toothpick and blowing what he found off his fingertips with a slightly grossed out face. Diego himself chose to stare at Klaus, and got a wide smirk in return. The warmth he felt now wasn’t the same as that of the anger.

Ben got up—he got down, actually, he’d been sitting on the top of the bar with his legs crossed—, took his time walking through the entire room, and smacked Klaus on the back of the head.

“Ouch!” Klaus’ palms flew to his chest, pressing against it right above his heart, and the way his eyebrows rose turned his face into that of someone who’s just been unexpectedly, unforgivably betrayed. “Why would you do that to me?”

Ben ignored him and turned to Diego instead.

“Could you two stop eye-fucking for a second so we can talk this through?” His face didn’t change the least when Diego blushed instead of answering, and somewhere, buried far beneath the many layers of shock and rage and embarrassment, Diego was sort of thankful for that. “Thanks.”

Ben sat down on the arm of Klaus’ armchair, and held on heroically while Klaus attempted to push him off with his feet.

“Great,” Luther said. Diego had sort of forgotten what they’d been arguing about. That they’d been arguing about anything. “Now that this is sorted, it’s pretty much time we started practicing. We’ve been messing up our daily routine these past few days.”

Slowly, Diego managed to remember the argument.

“Are you suggesting we stick to his routine now?”  he asked, building his anger back up with his own words.

“Diego,” Allison sighed, and he ignored her.

“The things we’ve been doing,” he went on, “the trainings we had, it messed with my head. And I know for a fact it messed with yours, too.”

“ _Diego_.”

“What?” He turned to Allison now, his fists clenching with rage. “Are you saying it didn’t fuck you up? Not sleeping for weeks when we had more hours on our schedule than we could fit into a day? Needing help to pry your hands off your drumsticks because your muscles were so sore you couldn’t move them? Not being able to speak after a month-long tour because you strained your vocal cords so bad?” Allison froze; Luther didn’t. Something began to thump behind Diego’s temples. “Look at me and tell me that was fine with you!”

This time, it was Luther who stepped closer; his chest almost pressing against Diego’s, well, shoulder.

“It was more than fine with me,” he said. “It’s our life; he gave it to us when he became our father. Honoring his legacy is the least we can do.”

Diego wanted to hit him; he could feel his knuckles ache to be bruised, on a sharp jawline, on a half-heartedly shaved stubble, on the tight muscles of Luther’s abs that would do more harm to him than he could ever do to them.

“You guys honor his legacy, then,” he said instead. He turned around and marched to the door, leaving Luther too surprised to reach after him. There was silence for a second, broken only by the air escaping Five’s lungs as he kept cleaning his nails and the heavy thumps of Diego’s boots; and then somebody gasped, high and loud, and Diego couldn’t help glancing back over his shoulder only to see a seemingly panicking Klaus climb out of his armchair with jittery, frantic movements.

“Diego!” he shouted after him, and Diego forgot to keep walking.

“What?”

Klaus finally found both of his feet and stood on them, Ben’s palm firmly against his back for support.

“Nothing, I’m just walking you out.” He walked through the room and put a hand on Diego’s shoulder, patting it in an almost aggressively friendly manner. “Come on now, let’s not keep these dear ones from practicing.”

They weren’t together at that point. They never really were, but that was long before it was even an option to be; long before the first awkward kiss, stolen in the changing room before a concert and leaving Diego confused for the rest of the night—the rest of the week, really, until they attempted to talk it through and ended up kissing some more instead—long before the others found out and began acting like there was something more to it than either of them had thought. Allison kept repeating how delighted she was that she didn’t have to play the role of the one with a crush on one of her brothers anymore and she suddenly became really interested in talking to Diego about something she liked to call deep stuff; and Ben seemed to have set his mind on taking care of Klaus’ mental well-being. They’d been close before, closer than they were with any of the others, but now Ben had his own concept about the deep stuff and how they should discuss it, and that changed things. He would ask Klaus how he felt, and he would do it continuously. He asked about the relationship—that was what the others called it, a relationship; it was only a thing for Klaus and Diego, the thing that meant they kissed and cuddled and slept together, and it was their thing and so it had to be something, but they never really felt like it needed, or deserved, a name—and he asked about everything else. He took Klaus out to eat, to walk, to watch a movie, to shop for clothes; and Diego wasn’t jealous, obviously, it was just strange after the first few weeks when they’d spent every free minute by themselves that Klaus suddenly took the time to go out with someone else. He never went anywhere with Diego. Diego assumed it was because he’d refused to hold hands the first time they left the house after the kissing incident; because that made Klaus blush and grin with his teeth gritted together, and he said something like yeah, of course, you’re right, making out with a guy doesn’t make you a faggot so why would you want people to think you’re one, and then they walked down the street with their hands in their pockets and then they never walked down the street again.

Things were okay. Diego thought they were. He had his good moments when he was with Klaus, the strange urge in his stomach to get as close to him as he only can, the urge to strip them both until it’s only skin touching skin when they cling together growing more and more with each day; even after their thing began, especially after their thing began. And he had his bad moments whenever that wasn’t happening. The Academy seemed dark now, the air turning heavy and bitter, the walls trembling like they were about to collapse, hitting him, choking him, burying him; because he didn’t leave the day he began walking away with Klaus and he didn’t leave anytime soon; he left only when it was time to sober up. And he had to stop being sober first.

It was Mom who stopped him, walking through the corridors with long steps and leaving mud on the floor with each; Klaus’ hand on his left shoulder, Klaus’ chatter in his left ear. Diego was humming in response, still amused by the way Klaus had handled Luther, still amazed by the fact he did it on Diego’s behalf, but he wasn’t listening. Then he stopped humming, too. Mom was in the hall, in the room they actually called the hall, that is; and she was moping the floor. Moping the mud Diego had left on his way in, that is.

“Diego,” Klaus said when he stopped, his tone impatient, his voice a singsong. “Di-e-go. Come on. The pizza place is only open for twenty more minutes and I’m starving.”

Diego cleared his throat.

“We—” he began and was interrupted by his own tongue immediately, “we shouldn’t lea-leave her.”

Klaus glared at him.

“She’s not coming,” he said then, his tone softer than Diego had assumed it would be. He glanced at Klaus in surprise, in enough of a surprise to take his gaze off Mom for a second, and Klaus’ mouth pulled into a sad little smile. “Hey, you know that.” He squeezed Diego’s shoulder." She’s a bit like Luther this way, she’s devoted her life to this—”

Diego shook his hand off himself.

“She’s nothing like Luther.”

“Yeah, no, wait—” Klaus rushed after him as he started walking towards Mom; she was still focused on the mop in her hands and the sound of the radio in her ears, she didn’t seem to have noticed them, “of course she’s nothing like him!” Diego didn’t even slow down when he grabbed his hand, and Klaus almost tripped over trying to fit his steps to Diego’s pace. “I’m only saying that Dad was important to her. And this house, can you really imagine her leaving this house? Because I can’t. And every second we spend in here I can imagine ourselves leaving less and less too, so how about we don’t waste our time and run the hell away while we’re still in the spur of the moment?” His fingers tightened around Diego’s hand, Diego could feel his own fingers tighten in his grip. “Diego?”

And Mom, obviously, wouldn’t leave.

Klaus never mentioned that day again. Not when they got to the rehearsing room  and  said their awkward hellos to the others, not when all of them began panicking on the way to their first concert without Reginald. Not even when Diego tried to bring it up one night, after a really long two hours of Klaus talking deep stuff with Ben and Diego gradually descending into a deep pit of self -pity and self-hatred— _ oh, that was _ _  so, so _ _  long ago _ __ was what he said,  _ there’s really no need to spend our precious time whining about it _ . The first and only time they talked about it was, and Diego still remembers this so clearly he could name the exact day if he  allowed  himself  to  think about it  long enough,  it was  seven  years later and six years ago , and even then, they didn’t really talk. Klaus did.

“Why the fuck didn’t we leave when we had the chance?” he said, staring into nothing with his eyes wide open.  They were sitting on Diego’s bed, Diego in his boxers, awake only for  the past  ten minutes and seriously dissatisfied with that; Klaus in his jeans and someone else’s jacket , awake, as he’d said, for the past three days, and still feeling a little too excited to go to sleep.

Diego didn’t know  if  he’d actually been awake and partying for three days; but he knew he hadn’t been home. And he hadn’t been anywhere Diego could’ve found him. He’d tried. At the diner, at the movies, at the designer shop Klaus  got— even though  back then it was  more bought  than got — most of his  clothes at.  But Klaus hadn’t been there, not  on  the first day and not on the following ones ; and taken from what he’d just said, he hadn’t been anywhere, really.

“Here and there,” he kept repeating. “With friends. Real nice friends, I should introduce you to them sometime.”

Diego didn’t know what to say to that. And then Diego didn’t know what to say to the question.

“Mom was here,” he murmured, and he could hear his own voice become weak with uncertainty as he went on. “I couldn’t leave her. It would have been wrong.”

“Well, she’s dead now!” Klaus announced, and Diego almost punched him in the face. He’d found his drug by then, even though he wasn’t conscious about it just yet. He’d begun hitting people when his knuckles told him to. But right now, there was something worrying about the way Klaus was staring at him; about the way he clasped his hands together and let his voice grow loud enough to wake the entire house.  His eyes were wide. His pupils were dark. His breath smelled like alcohol and fast food and vomit; it was salty and it was sour; it almost forced a grimace on Diego’s face.  “And so is Ben! Nothing to lose anymore! ”

Diego stared at him silently while Klaus’ grin grew wider and wider.

“Are you high?” he asked then. The grin stayed on Klaus’ face but now it looked a little confused.

“Me?” he asked back, cheeks turning pale. “What have you been thinking? That I’d go out for three long days and three even longer nights  with all those nice people  and not even get high?”

Diego blinked. Klaus reached for his hand and grabbed it, pulling it to his lips and pressing a kiss on one of his knuckles; another one, then; all of them; his mouth was cold and dry and  the thing Diego felt reminded him of the panic that normally came with his stutter.

“What did you take?” he asked, half-expecting himself to not be able to say the words at the first attempt; and Klaus chuckled instead of answering, and began kissing the back of his hand now. He pouted when Diego pulled it away.

“I don’t know,” he said then, the  vowels way too long, the spaces between his words way too short. “We smoked a little, I guess, and then there was this really nice guy with this thing you had to pop into your drink, and then I was sort of carried away, you know what I’m saying.” He leaned in like it was some conspiracy they were plotting, and lowered his voice until Diego had a really hard time making out the words. “But you know what I remember taking? I,” and he paused there to point a trembling finger at his own chest, his nail  pressing into the skin and leaving a thin red mark, the last digit of his finger  turning white while bending in the wrong direction, “I remember taking two hours of my precious spare time to talk to my dearest brother.”

For a second, Diego thought that was him and even considered reminding Klaus that no, they had most definitely not said a word to each other since he’d disappeared three nights earlier.  He realized he was wrong just in time.

“Oh,” he said, eventually. Klaus smirked at him.

“Yeah. Turns out, our dear old Ben is doing quite well over there in the afterlife. I even asked him to check up on you now that he has no problems walking through walls; is it true that you’ve been moping ever since I left?”

He had.

Klaus was staring at him with that strange expression, the one that Diego later learned meant that he was more  sad  than high but wanted to maintain  the latter option so bad he  could actually convince himself ; and Diego cleared his throat.

“I haven’t.”

“That’s too bad.” Klaus leaned back, falling onto Diego’s sheets and putting his feet in Diego’s lap. He was wearing a pair of boots Diego had only seen on him at their concerts before. “If Ben was wrong about you, maybe I’m wrong about Ben, too. I mean, those tentacles did seem a little strange after all.”

Diego tried to untie his shoelaces and gave up embarrassingly fast.

“Tentacles?” he repeated, mouth staying open even after he’d finished speaking.

“Tentacles,” Klaus nodded  earnestly. “They were coming from his tummy, like this,” and he put his hands on his own stomach and wobbled his fingers around, and Diego felt sick.

“Come on,” he said after a while. Klaus looked up; he’d been busy staring at  the dancing fingers that didn’t look like they belonged to him anymore.

“Come where?”

“Here.” Diego lifted the sheets as best he could  and laid down next to Klaus, pulling him closer to himself, pulling the sheets over the both of them. “Get some sleep, alright?”

“Yes, Daddy,” Klaus mumbled, and Diego nearly choked on the thin air he was breathing.

He was going to discuss all of this with Klaus  in the morning,  once he’d sobered up.  But Klaus wasn’t in his bed in the morning, and when he came home again, he sure as hell hadn’t sobered up, either.

“But I can see him,” he whispered when Diego told him to stop talking stupid shit about Ben, “I can see him and he can see me too, and we talk when he’s not too busy playing around with his tentacles.” The tentacles seemed to be a permanent feature . “I don’t know what I’d do  if I lost him for good .”  And that may have been the thing that got stuck in Diego’s head, got stuck so bad he couldn’t find a way to make it go away until it slowly changed, until he formed it into an idea so appealing he didn’t even try saying no to it.

“Just this once,” he said when Klaus  held  his hand and walked him down the alley leading to the bar.  “I only want to see if it works.”

It didn’t work. It didn’t work in the sense that it didn’t help him see Mom, but good god did it work in every other way there is.

“You’re a fucking addict,” he told Klaus, his voice blurred under the sound of the music flowing from the speakers ,  “and I’m not. I’m nothing like you. Mom is nothing like Luther.”

“No, of course she’s not,”  Klaus whispered back, his elbow on the table, his chin in his palm, all  unbuttoned shirt and trembling eyelashes and dark circles under his eyes. Diego leaned over the table and held his face in both hands, pulling him close, kissing him deep. Klaus chuckled when he pulled away; and he  pulled away , Diego didn’t, Diego only felt a sharp tug in his guts, an urge to jump to his feet and leap over the table and get to Klaus,  as  close as they’d been before Ben died.

“What did I get that for?” Klaus asked, and Diego made an effort to shrug even though he really didn’t feel like it.

“Haven’t done it in a while.”

Klaus smiled at him; it was a grin that Diego had been expecting and it was a real smile he got instead, it warmed up Klaus’ eyes and it warmed up Diego’s chest.

“That’s right, you haven’t.” And then Klaus was standing up  and offering him a hand, and Diego took it before he knew where they were going. “You know what else you haven’t done in a while?”

Diego honestly assumed he meant fucking, and he followed Klaus even more eagerly, a wide grin on his face and the same old warmth everywhere else . When they got to the  stage in the far corner of the bar, he realized he’d meant something entirely different. And so the y  ended up creating actual music, for the first time since Ben’s death, for the first time without the ridiculous French horn with the ridiculous sound,  and Diego got a guitar and Klaus got a sy nthesizer  and they both ended up singing; and that may very well have been the first time Diego ever noticed what a shame it was that Reginald had never allowed Klaus to sing.

And then they fucked in the loo.

That was the second time Diego had taken a pill. It still felt strange at that point, he hadn’t even smoked a joint before; but he , obviously enough,  did later. And so did the others. Allison did, Luther did when she  used her charm on him, Five did. Five ended up sticking to his booze, though, and Luther fell asleep every single time after the first five minutes, and Allison  would worry about Vanya and  kept saying she wanted  to call her because she always forgot none of them had her number; but that was okay. They were okay. And their music was awesome. And there came the new kinds of concerts, those played in foggy alleys and dark back rooms, those  preceded  by a night out, those followed by a night in; and on the n ight-ins Diego was with Klaus, and there w ere  the ropes and the candles  and the endless hours of teasing, and some part, a pretty large part of Diego still hasn’t stopped wishing  those kinds of concerts weren’t gone.

*

The strange thing was, nothing really happened to stop them. Mom’s ghost didn’t magically appear to express her disappointment in her children, his siblings didn’t overdose and scare the shit out of him—they did, more than once, but it didn’t exactly scare the shit out of Diego—, he didn’t get into a fight that left him broken enough to want a change. He did get into fights, though, but he enjoyed them too much to let himself be defeated. They were a new, special way of communicating with others. A much simpler and cleaner way than any of the ways Diego had known before. And he was happy with it. He still could be happy with it; and  when  his fingers tighten around the edge of the washbasin  at that thought, he rolls his eyes at the irony. He hasn’t fought anybody since he got kicked out of the academy.

That was a different kind of academy. Police, because after marching out of the flat all five of them had shared —all four, after Five had disappeared , four siblings, two not-quite-couples, the most awkward thing Diego had ever experienced — and after marching out of the room the very last session of his  very first  rehab had taken place in, he realized he’d forgotten his music and the things he’d been supposed to achieve with it. So he made an attempt to achieve things in a different way, an attempt that he managed to screw up in, what, four months? He even had a girlfriend for those four months.  That, he definitely shouldn’t have screwed up.

He opens the tap again, finally looking away from his own reflection, and washes his face one more time. There are absolutely no tears on it that he’d have to wash off.  And then he takes a deep breath and then he walks out of the loo; and then he realizes he must have spent an awfully long time standing in front of that damn mirror because the concert is over now, some people are still  applauding and others are making their way to the door, going for a breath of fresh air or going home, Diego doesn’t know. What he does know, though, is that the band’s most definitely gone.

“Shit.”

He rushes to the stage; it’s easy to rush to the stage now, there’s hardly anyone left to stand in his way. It takes him some time to find the door that leads to the changing rooms because it’s covered by the same heavy curtain that’s hanging on all three walls surrounding the stage ; but then he finds it and he walks through it, and then he’s stopped by somebody who’s sweaty and large and looks a whole lot like security.

Diego tries to hide his surprise and fails at it miserably. He wouldn’t have thought the place has any kind of security.

“Hi,” he says,  standing on his tiptoes to get a peak over the man’s shoulder at the corridor behind him.

“Hi.” The man moves a little to block his view entirely. Diego’s gaze flickers to his crotch and back to his face. A fist in the nose, a knee in the balls , a knife to the throat. It would be so easy.

Diego clears his throat.

“I’m looking for someone,” he begins, but it sounds a little more like a question than an explanation. “The singer of the band, Klaus? Klaus  Hargreeves ?”

“Yes?” the man lifts and eyebrow at him and does very much not move. Diego forces a smile on his face.

“Yes. Is he in there?”

“What do you want from him? ”

Due to  the limited amount of time, Diego doesn’t start listing all the things he wants from him.

“We need to talk,” he says instead. “ You know,  uh,  f amily emergency. He’s my brother.”

The man furrows his brows, and Diego’s not sure if he’s considering letting him in or kicking his ass; but then the problem is sort of solved when one of the doors practically explodes and Klaus  marches out into the corridor, his arms around one of the guitarists’ waist, his shoulder under the guitarist’s arm. He’s speaking, even though it sounds an awful lot like the way he’s been singing—his lips are moving and there’s something that sounds like words coming from his mouth but Diego can’t  find the least bit of sense in them—and  he doesn’t stop when he sees Diego, he only forms a surprised little “oh” with his lips, and  detangles himself from the guitarist’s hold.

“And who’s that if not the lovely old ex-boyfriend I’ve been telling you about?” he says, not looking at the guitarist anymore. The man who stopped Diego lifts an eyebrow at him and he does most definitely not blush.

“It’s a long story,” he mumbles, only vaguely aware that no, he’s not making it any better.

“It is one indeed,” Klaus nods,  waving everyone aside and walking to Diego, putting an arm around his waist and pressing a kiss to his cheek. Diego didn’t think he heard what he said. “Especially the part when he left me without a word and texted me half a year later that he was sorry but he needed to get clean and he couldn’t have done that with me. ”

“Five months,” Diego tries to correct him but it’s not working.

“And he was right!” Klaus goes on as if he hadn’t said a word. “It’s very hard to convince someone to get clean with you if you don’t even try , isn’t that right? ”

“I,” Diego begins and gives up immediately when he realizes he’s forgotten everything he was going to say.

“No, it’s okay,” Klaus says, shaking his head, “of course it’s okay! He’s here now ! He wants to talk, I suppose, maybe even convince me to go home with him, and why shouldn’t he do that? He’s pulled his life together now, it’s only natural that he wants to fix mine too, right?”

“I mop floors,” Diego says.

Klaus blinks at him, his gaze clearing up a bit, only to fade again a second later; but he doesn’t interrupt him now. Diego feels like he finally has his attention—and the security guy’s and the guitarist’s, and he wishes he’d never started talking.

“I mop f-floors,” he says, only screwing up the very last word. “I’ve been in rehab, twice, because I fucked up the first time. I went to school and got myself k-kicked out after four months. I met there someone I really liked and she threw me out when she found out I was f-fighting again.”

Klaus’ expression began softening while he was  talking but it  had  hardened again by the time he finished. Of course it did; he mentioned Eudora. He shouldn’t have if he’d wanted to  preserve Klaus’ peace of mind.  But he still tears up when he wakes at night to find the other side of the bed empty, for god’s sake; he’s not going to keep her existence a secret.

“Why are you here?” Klaus asks now, his voice is blank and so is his expression.

“Five’s back home.”

“What?” Klaus lets him go now so he can stare into Diego’s face with his eyes narrowed more comfortably. “Where has he been?”

“ Yeah, well.  Playing  in The Commission , he says .”

Klaus stares at him for another moment, then he snorts, then he bursts out laughing.

“The Commission? That cunning little boy, how the hell did he get in there?”

“Because they needed someone who wasn’t a complete loser more than we did. I quote.”

Klaus huffs out another light little laugh.

“So he’s really back, huh? ”

Diego nods.

“Why didn’t he stay with them?”

“That’s the thing, man, we don’t know. ” The security guy raises his eyebrow again  when he hears him call Klaus that, but Klaus doesn’t seem to find it weird. That’s good. That’s really good. “He’s been feeding us this bullshit about not getting along with them and their morals , but nothing more.”

“Okay. Thanks for telling me, I guess?” Klaus is stepping away and it’s more instinctive than  intentional that Diego reaches out to catch his hand and pull him back; and Klaus must know that because he’s smiling now but it’s the saddest smile Diego’s ever seen on his face and he’s had his fair share of them. He wonders why he never noticed back then. He’s been wondering for a while now.

“He wants to fight them,” Diego says, and ruins the moment  inalterably. Klaus’ eyes narrow again.

“He wants to what?”

“Fight them. The Commission. There’s this competition for , you know, young artists and emerging bands, this  kinda  shit.”

“The Commission is not emerging. It’s more like ruling the whole fucking scene.”

“Yeah, I don’t think they care. And they are  gonna  win this  thing  if we’re not there to stop them.”

Klaus raises an eyebrow at him; it’s very black and very thin and it glitters a little with smudged eyeshadow and slowly drying sweat.

“Why do you care if they win?” he asks. “I mean, you haven’t touched your guitar in, what, two years? Three? A lifetime? Do you even still have it?”

“A new one. Without Dad’s stupid Academy  engraving.” Diego takes a deep breath. “The rehearsals are every Saturday, nine in the morning. At  Five’s place, we’re not going anywhere near the Academy.  It’s—”

“No, don’t bother telling me where it is.” Klaus flashes his teeth at him again, and this expression is sad, too, but this time Diego wouldn’t even really call it a smile. “You guys have fun, though. I bet you’re  gonna  kick everyone’s ass at the competition, or something.”

“Klaus.”

Klaus doesn’t seem to be listening; he’s turning to the other two men instead who are still standing there, putting their weight on one f oo t then the other, and their faces look like they’d just seen a car crash and can’t turn their eyes away even though they know they’d probably be much better off if they stopped watching.

“Could you guys just go away for a second?” And then th ey are glancing at one  ano ther with the most uncomfortable grimaces Diego’s ever seen, and they are backing away while saying their goodbyes and their  sorries , and  Klaus is stepping to Diego to cup his face in both hands and leaning to him to press a kiss to his lips,  and he tastes like all the things Diego has promised himself never to taste again,  like vomit  and  like booze but mostly like himself; and Diego will never admit that his hands on Klaus’ wrists are trembling  and clutching  and  grabbing  when Klaus pulls away,  but good god they are.

*

“Stop staring at the door, Diego, he’s not coming.” Five has been saying that for the past thirty minutes; but, well, Diego’s been staring at the door for the past thirty minutes, so maybe he deserves that.

“Yeah, I know.”

“It didn’t work,” Five  says now . “We’ll have to go on  without him. And maybe you should go on, too. Get a new job. A boyfriend. Or a girlfriend, whatever, right?”

Diego has heard  more accurate  definitions for his bisexuality but he’s not going to point that out now.

“Right.”

“That’s all nice and settled, then.” Five claps his hands once and jumps to his feet to grab his clarinet. It’s his old one, the one he got when they moved in.  His smile is the old one, too, white and tight and not particularly friendly. “Let’s get back to work, shall we?”

“Yeah.”

The flat is actually kind of friendly; and that makes it pretty clear that Five is renting not only the place but the furniture and decorations as well.  There are six chairs altogether and only two of them matches the other. Luther and Allison are sitting on those, a thing that made Diego snort loudly when he first walked into rehearsal, ten minutes late and without a guitar. He’d had to finish cleaning the corridor, too.

“Here,” Allison says now, and Diego is pulled back into the small kitchen again. Allison is reaching out to hand him a slip of paper she’s just produced from a pocket, and he takes it and reads it, his brows furrowing.

“You wrote this?” he asks, then. It’s not bad, he has to admit it. Quite good, even.

“Some of it, yeah,” Allison says, giving a copy to Five, too. “ The  tunes are mostly mine. Luther wrote the lyrics.”

Diego blinks at her. Allison is smiling brightly, and so is Luther, a little more awkward and a little less bright, and he shrugs when Diego opens his mouth to say something but closes it when he realizes he doesn’t really know what that should be.

“I like the moon,”  Luther  says.

The song is about the moon. About a man on the moon, to be precise, and a woman he left behind ; it’s like a tale, a tale she’s telling to her child every night so they never forget him, a tale that sounds like a white lie and one that makes Diego’s eyes itch; and he’s totally not about to cry because of something Luther has written.

Five is reading, too, and he’s grinning when he looks up.

“Smart move,” he says. “Playing at their emotions, huh? It worked pretty well on Diego.”

“No, I—” Diego starts, but something tells him to shut up, and that something might very well be the  sheepish little smile in the corner of Luther’s mouth  that, for some reason, doesn’t irritate him as much as it would have once.

“Alright.” Five puts down the slip of paper. “Let’s do this. Allison, you sing it once without us and we listen, then we all begin to practice our parts. Go.”

Allison smiles awkwardly. Five raises an eyebrow at her.

“Go?” he tries again, and Allison shakes her head.

“I’m not sure I can do that,” she says, her voice quiet. “I’ve put some really high notes in there, and my voice has become kind of rusty for certain things. Definitely too rusty for that.” She shrugs, her smile turning apologetic ,  Five’s cheeks turning red.

“Why on Earth did you write it like this, then?”

“I don’t know.” Allison is fidgeting around now, seemingly feeling uncomfortable under the weight of everyone’s gaze; and then she shots a glance at Diego before she speaks again, and then Diego knows what she’s about to say long before she actually says it. “I was hoping Klaus would show up, okay?”

And then Diego feels his chest warm up, even though it has nothing to do with him.

“Allison,” he says, but his voice is lost when the entire room explodes in the same exact moment.

“Stop looking at me like that,” Allison says.

“That’s not going to work,” Luther says.

“But he didn’t show up, did he?” Five says.

The door creaks quietly and Diego’s head snaps up in an instant.

“Klaus,” Allison says.

“I heard your band was in desperate need of another member,” Klaus says.

“Did you fucking rehearse this?” Diego says.

“It’s not going to work,” Luther says.

“Everybody shut up,” Five says.

They do shut up. They stare at each other in silence  after shutting up ; everyone at Klaus, Klaus at everyone. It reminds Diego of another place and another time, of another rehearsal they couldn’t get themselves to start; but back then, the others were staring at him and Klaus ,  and the two of them were only looking at one another.

Back then, he also hurt Klaus for life in the five minutes that followed. And now he’s come back anyway.

“You’re here,” Diego says, not in the most intellectual way he’s ever expressed himself in. He can feel his own mouth hang slightly open but he doesn’t bother closing it. Klaus is there, in the same room as him; more importantly, in the same room as the entire family; all bony limbs and swaying hips and smudged eyeliner, and he’s finally turning to Diego now.

“Yeah,” he says with a shrug. “Why would I have rehearsed this again?”

“Because,” Diego mumbles something without much articulation—or sense, for that matter—then glances at Allison and receives an encouraging nod in return, “w-we were just talking about you.”

“About me?” Klaus takes off his coat—he's wearing a heavy coat and a see-through shirt underneath, Diego half-expects himself to be unable to stop staring, then realizes a couple of surprised blinks later that he is indeed unable to stop staring, but at Klaus’ face instead of his chest, and mentally pats himself on the back for that—and throws it on one of the chairs. He throws  himself on another. “Whoa,” he goes on. “Who would have thought  silly old me has  become such an important person in  his  absence?”

Five opens his mouth to say something, but Allison shoots him a glance—she does  it  before Diego could, mostly because he’s still busy being proud of himself, and also quickly checking out the shirt, just in case—and he actually stays silent.

“ He has ,” Allison says. Klaus raises an eyebrow at her and Diego, suddenly, feels a hint of sadness; but she doesn’t seem disconcerted. “I’d like you to read a thing Luther and I wrote. Five, could you?”

“Sure  thing ,” Five says, handing his own slip of paper to Klaus. Klaus takes it, stares blankly at it for a second, then looks back at Allison.

“Very nice,” he says.

“You haven’t read it,” Luther murmurs, and Klaus grins at him.

“Don’t you worry, I will. Why am I reading this again?”

“Because,” Allison stands up now and walks to him; she seems tall now, in her high heels and being the only person standing in the room; and Klaus seems surprised by her height when she gets to him. “Because I’m not nearly fit to be the one singing this,” she says, putting one of her hands on Klaus’ shoulder. “But I happen to know somebody who would be just perfect.”

Klaus raises his other eyebrow as well.

“Who?” he asks. It sounds genuine, it  _ is  _ genuine, and Diego’s knuckles want to punch somebody in the face. Somebodies, including himself, if possible.

Allison doesn’t flinch.

“You,” she says. And then everything’s happening really fast again, Klaus is shaking his head and mumbling something, Allison is shaking her head even more and mumbling something else, she sounds reassuring and he sounds frightened, and Luther sounds deeply confused but Diego isn’t interested in making out what he’s saying, and Five is nodding frantically; and it’s over when Allison crouches down to pull Klaus into a hug, and when she pulls away, her blouse is wet with snot and tears, and so are both of their faces.

Diego’s isn’t, obviously. He totally didn’t use the temporal chaos to wipe anything off of it.

“Okay?” Allison asks, and Klaus nods.

“Okay.”

“But,” Luther says, even more confused than before, “that’s not going to work.”

“Yeah, you’ve said that before,” Diego snaps, then shuts his mouth immediately. “Yeah, no, old habits,” he mutters. “Go on.”

“Why do you think it’s not going to work?” Allison asks, sitting back on her chair.

“Because Klaus is, you know, a guy.”

“You don’t think a guy can sing higher than me?” Allison is chuckling now, squeezing Luther’s thigh gently with a hand. Diego feels a hint of  env y, but that’s what he feels most of the time when he’s around them. Or any other couple, for that matter. “Luther, you’ve heard me sing.”

“Yes, but.” Luther scratches the back of his head awkwardly. “The song is about a guy too?”

“Dear god,” Klaus says, lifting his hand to bury his forehead into his palm with his head thrown back for additional drama. Allison stares at Luther in confusion. Diego contemplates whether it’s possible to beat up someone much larger than you while also hysterically laughing your ass off.

“You literally have at least two—” he begins instead, and is interrupted by Five immediately.

“That’s exactly the point!” he exclaims. He’s still nodding, and grinning, and looks like he’s not far from starting to clap his hands; and that’s unusual enough of a sight to make Diego forget what he was going to say about Luther and his bunch of queer siblings.

“I don’t understand,” Luther says.

“You would if you only used your head a little. Allison did,” and Five glances at her appreciatively.

“Well ,  thank you, but—”

“Don’t tell me you didn’t properly think this through!” Five’s eyes are literally burning, but, weirdly enough, it doesn’t seem like the bad kind of burning. “Political correctness! That’s what you do if you want to win! You grab a minority, just like we’re grabbing one right now—”

“Ouch,” Diego remarks, and his heart quite literally skips a beat when Klaus grins at him.

“—and you make its struggle the very center of your art. And boom,” Five makes a gesture with his hands that’s probably meant to symbolize an explosion and that, somehow, doesn’t seem to fit him right, “you win!”

“That’s,” Allison begins carefully, and Klaus interrupts her.

“Awesome!” he says. He doesn’t look as contented as he sounds, but he doesn’t exactly look hurt, either. Not more hurt than normally, that is.

Diego  considers slapping  himself for using  “normally”  in that sentence.

“Do you really think so?” Five asks, furrowing his brows. For some reason, Klaus’ exclamation seems to have caught him off guard.

“Sure, sure.” Klaus jumps up from the chair and climbs up the table instead. “Can you help me with this, Allison? We’re doing this exactly the way you imagined.”

*

It goes well. It goes surprisingly well. Allison takes the role of the leader quickly and so smoothly nobody even notices until it’s done; she’s not using contempt like Five would or long motivational speeches like Luther would or threats like Diego  assumes  he would. She cajoles them instead. She shows Klaus what to do and how to do it, always keeping her voice an octave lower, even when she could hit the actual notes easily; never taking the thing  from Klaus  she’s handed over to him in the first place. She explains everything effectively and very calmly, and never makes fun of Five when, for once, he’s the one who needs the explanation. She always stands next to Luther and talks to him quietly when he says he’s feeling overwhelmed by his task, she speaks of something  she calls healthy unimportance, of things being easier when you stop believing they are solely about you. And Diego—she leaves him alone most of the time. But she will leave Luther to go to him whenever his hands start trembling, and they do sometimes because it’s hard to keep your hands from trembling when you’re screwing something up for the tenth time in a row, and she will put her hand on his for a second; only for a second, only until she feels they’re under control again.

Diego wonders if they were horribly wrong to think Luther, or Five, or even himself would be a good enough leader. He sort of thinks they were.

But the rehearsal goes well, and it’s almost enjoyable, too; the song sounds better and better and the part they’ve finished becomes longer and longer; and there are moments when he almost forgets to worry about Klaus because he’s so consumed by his music. By their music. But then Klaus makes sure nobody forgets about him, because when they’re finished, when they’ve played the entire song for the third time, with more mistakes but also more  intensity than  ever before; he jumps off the table and throws the slip of paper  away  with an irritated growl. It would look a lot more dramatic if it actually fell instead of floating softly towards the ground, but Diego gets the spirit anyway and he’s pretty sure the others do, too.

“What is it, Klaus?” Allison asks.

“This is not working!” Klaus, who hasn’t touched his pocket for the past hour, reaches into it now and pops a pill into his mouth before Diego could think of a proper way to tell him to please, for fuck’s sake, at least try not to do that. Five lets out an irritated sigh. Allison doesn’t.

“What’s not working?”

“This!” Klaus gestures around the room, the table, the chairs, the one left empty by him and the one taken only by his coat. “We’re missing an instrument!”

“Yeah, maybe you’re right,” Allison nods. “We can get you a piano for next week, if you want. Or I can try to play it, if you want to focus on singing; I’m not nearly as good as you but I’ve been practicing and—” She pauses when Klaus glares at her. “Oh.”

“Oh,” Klaus echoes.

Diego glances at Luther right when Luther glances at him.

“Guys,” Diego says. “We’re feeling a little left out over here.”

Neither of them answers, they seem to be way too busy staring at each other, Allison’s expression worried, Klaus’ expression almost angry.

“Vanya,” Five says instead of them, and his voice is suddenly very soft. Diego glances at Luther again.

“Shit.”

Luther nods in silent agreement.

“Look, Klaus.” Allison takes a deep breath. “You’re right. You’re absolutely right, she should be here. But she doesn’t want to.”

“How do you know if you never asked?”

“I did.”

“You what?” Klaus’ eyes are open wide in surprise.

“I did,” Allison repeats. “I’ve been talking to her for a while now. It began before Five came back, actually.

Klaus has an expression Diego knows very well; he’s used to seeing it on his own face when he knows he’s about to stutter and is fighting hard to avoid it.

“Why?” Klaus asks, more or less clearly.

“Because I missed her.” Allison sighs quietly. “I missed all of you. But I chose to talk to her because she’s the one we rejected first. I had Luther. You had Diego.” Diego flinches and so does Klaus, but neither of them  says  anything. Allison notices anyway. “Sort of,” she adds. “I didn’t know if you were together  at that point , but I figured  the two of  you still had better chances than she did. Five—he was practically impossible to find. And honestly, I wanted to see her the most.”

Klaus stays quiet for a second, and when he speaks, his voice is almost calm.

“Fair enough.”

“No, it wasn’t really fair,” Allison says, shaking her head. “I should have gone looking for all of you. But I was so happy to see her that I couldn’t focus on anyone else for a while. Then Five found me before I could have found him.”

“I wanted her to be a part of this,” Five says suddenly. Diego turns to him. He’s feeling confused now, confused and slow, like pieces of information are flying through the room, just above his head, but he’s unable to catch and keep a single one of them. Which is sort of what’s happening. But he’s still pretty sure that Five found it important to say what he’s just said, he can hear that in the way his voice is trembling, and he feels a wave of warmth again, even though this isn’t about him, again.

Five snorts.

“Don’t look at me like that, Diego,” he says, “I’ve seen your emotional face just enough times today. I’m not used to you having one yet.” Klaus glances at Diego now, Diego knows that because he glances at Klaus, too; but he turns back to Five quickly because he’s speaking again. “I only wanted her to be here because I think the sound of the violin would fit our current profile neatly.”

“We didn’t have a profile until today,” Diego reminds him.

“Well, we do now, don’t we?”

Diego decides not to argue with that.

“I agree,” Klaus says. “With Five. We just sound off without her.  _ I _  sound off without her.”

Allison lifts her eyebrows.

“What do you mean by that?”

“I can hear her violin when we’re playing,” Klaus says. Diego feels something cool and unpleasant run down his spine. “It’s trying to compete with my voice.”

“Yes?” Allison sounds gentle, and so is the movement of her hand when she gestures for him to go on.

“It’s doing something completely different than we are,” Klaus explains, or tries to, with his face and his hands a little more enthusiastically than with his words. “It’s, like, breaking free. It always begins with something similar to what we’ve played so far, but then it’s off,” he gestures upwards with his hands and his eyebrows, and Diego can’t help but follow the gesture with his eyes, his gaze flying up to the ceiling then slowly sinking back to Klaus’ face. “It’s sort of otherworldly,” Klaus finishes awkwardly, and he looks almost scared when he glances at Diego. “Does anyone get this?”

“I think I do,” Diego mumbles, and Klaus smiles at him; it makes Diego feel worried because it’s more thankful than delighted, but it also warms up his chest and his guts and, most likely, his face.

“So do I,” Five says, and Klaus jumps a little in what Diego assumes is surprise.

“And I,” Allison adds. “But, Klaus, we’ve tried to talk to her. She doesn’t want this. We agreed that I’d never mention it again—not the band, I mean, just the idea of her being in it. And then she’d keep talking to me.”

“Lucky you,” Five murmurs. “I couldn’t come to such an agreement with her.”

“Five,” Allison sighs. “I told you not to push her too hard.”

“Yes, you did.”

The silence is incredibly uncomfortable this time. Diego wishes he had something to say. Judging from Luther’s face, he’s thinking the same.

“Maybe it’s not that you pushed her too hard,” Klaus says, then. Everyone turns to look at him. “Maybe you just pushed her wrong.”

“Pushed her wrong?” Five repeats.

“Yeah.” Klaus goes to grab his coat, and swings it over his shoulders. “Any of you got her address?”

“I do.” Allison steps forward. “But she’s busy right now. She’s rehearsing every Saturday, that’s why we’re rehearsing on Saturdays too.”

“Okay, well, when is she  gonna  be not busy?”

“Tomorrow. I’ll text you her address,” Allison says, then adds awkwardly, “if you give me your number.”

So Klaus does.

“Okay, everybody, rehearsal’s over,” Five exclaims suddenly. He seems to have found his usual voice again. It’s a little more harsh than normally, even, like he’s trying to compensate for the softness of the past few minutes. “Let’s get going, I have a job to get to.”

“It’s Saturday,” Luther says. Five glares at him.

“It’s a serious job.”

Diego doesn’t listen to the rest. He gets up and puts his guitar down, then hurries to the door to catch Klaus before he could step through it. He manages  to do that , with a palm placed carefully on his shoulder; and Klaus spins around with his eyebrows raised.

“Diego?”

“Yeah, I.” He’s  _ so _  going to stutter, he can feel it. “I was wondering, would you  wanna  grab a cup of coffee?”

Okay, this went well.

“With you?”

“Yeah, with  m- me.”

Shit.

“Okay.” Klaus shrugs, right when Diego feels his own jaw fall slightly.

“What, really?”

“Why not?” Klaus grabs the hand that’s still lingering on his shoulder but he doesn’t hold it; he drops it instead, and, just when Diego thinks he’s being completely rejected, and it’s not that Klaus doesn’t have the right to do that, it’s just that it doesn’t feel all that nice anyway; he  links  his arm  together with  Diego’s. “Let’s go, big guy.”

And Diego would feel the kind of joy he hasn’t felt since everything he’d had with Eudora fell apart—not counting the last time he saw Klaus, obviously, that was, in its own twisted way, one of his more joyful experiences—if it wasn’t for Five. Five, who, most likely in another attempt to regain his role as the emotionless one of the team, shouts after them.

“Don’t fuck this up by fucking him, Diego, rehearsal’s been going very well!”

Klaus freezes midway through a step. Diego stops. Diego takes a deep breath. Diego turns, along with Klaus—he's following Diego’s movement with a light smile on his lips, but his arm feels tense against Diego’s side—to face Five.

“It’s different this time,” Diego says; his voice, thank god, strong and composed.

“Yeah, right,” Klaus adds, and Diego flinches because his voice is anything but, “this time we’ll just keep it professional.”

And Diego wants to shout at him; he wants to grab him by both shoulders and shake him until he can be sure he’s listening, and then he wants to shout at him; he wants to tell him that this time it will be different because there won’t be a this time until Klaus allows it, and there won’t be a this time unless Klaus is sober and unless Diego is sober, too; there won’t be a this time that might result in them hurting each other—in Diego hurting Klaus, mostly, but he’s been told by more than a few of his therapists more than a few times  n ot  to  forget about his own good, either, so he tries to remember that now—again.

He silently glares at Five instead, and then they’re leaving, through the door and the stairwell and the entire building, into the bright heat of the afternoon sunshine.

*

“Still no sugar?” is the first thing Klaus asks. Diego hides his smile behind his cup and burns his tongue immediately.

“Shit,” he says. Klaus grins at him. “Nope, still no sugar.”

It’s weird now. It’s weird, because now it’s only the two of them, and Klaus, the one who’s been jumping on and off furniture this whole day and kissing a completely random sequence of people, including Diego, just a few nights ago, has turned almost unbearably quiet.

He’s not quiet  quiet , obviously; the entire street has listened to him choosing a drink, and they listened for ten whole minutes. He’s just not the way Diego remembers him being. He  doesn ’t properly laugh into his face for sipping his boiling hot coffee, for instance.

“And you? Still no coffee-colored coffee?”

“What were you expecting?” Klaus sips his drink, too. He doesn’t get burned, though. It’s a cold thing—Diego thinks he heard him and the barista call it  a frappe  but he’s not sure—and it’s very white and very golden. The drink itself it white; the whipped cream on top is covered in golden sprinkles. If its taste is any similar to its smell, then it’s definitely vanilla flavored.

Klaus moans suddenly, and Diego swallows hard.

“Oh, this is good!” Klaus says, his voice finally something like enthusiastic. “Hey, you,” he waves to the barista, “I hope you know this is awesome!”

“Klaus,” Diego says, but he’s not listening.

“ Wanna  try?” He pushes the tall glass over the table, and Diego catches it just in time. He takes a sip through the straw, ignoring the fact that it’s shining a little with Klaus’  lipgloss . He  hadn’t  noticed he  was  wearing any. He definitely  does n ow.

“It’s good,” he says before he actually feels the taste; and then it’s there, flooding his mouth and his throat, and his nose, even. It’s vanilla for sure. But it’s not bad. And it’s something Klaus likes. “Okay, wait, this is really good.”

“Told you.” Diego leans down to take another sip, and Klaus snatches the glass before he could. “No way. You’ve got your no-sweetness, blacker-than-my-soul thing , stay away from my baby .”

“Alright, alright.” Diego considers trying to drink from his own cup again, then dismisses the idea when he touches it with his fingertips. He takes a breath instead. He pictures the words. “Klaus,” he says again ;  that was easy, that’s sharp and soft, a K and an L and a U, dull green and shining black and lavender like his fingernails, and the S is the color of the vanilla thing in Klaus’ hand, “we need to t-talk.”

The T is a navy blue, it’s a fat bubble he’s supposed to pop with his tongue. He fucking hates navy blue right now.

“Yeah, I supposed that’s why we came here.” Klaus’ hand disappears under the table, and he’s holding a pill, no, that’s two pills, when it surfaces again. “Cheers.”

Diego watches him swallow both with a large gulp of his coffee, and he doesn’t say a word.

“Cheers,” Klaus repeats, clicking his tongue. “What do we need to talk about, my d ear ?”

He has thought about this. (He has written this down and read it out loud in front of a mirror, over and over again, until he memorized it.) He can tell it to Klaus now.

“I fucked up,” he says. Klaus raises an eyebrow at him like he needs an explanation, but, if Diego is honest with himself, there isn’t much left to explain. That’s pretty much the essence of everything else he’s been planning to say.

“Yeah?”

“I fucked up,” Diego repeats. “When I left.”

Klaus squirms uncomfortably in his chair; his fingers are fiddling around with the straw and his gaze is focused on them, but he doesn’t even seem to notice that they’re moving.

“Diego, you don’t have to do this.”

“Yeah, I do.”

“No, you don’t.” Klaus looks at him again. “We’re past that. I fucked up too, very clearly, when I dragged all of you into my world, but that’s not a thing we can change now, so what’s the point?”

“The point is,” Diego says, very slowly, “that I left you without a word.” Klaus opens his mouth, then shuts it when Diego shakes his head. “I know that you think it’s your fault that I had to leave. What I’m trying to tell you is, I didn’t have to.”

“Of course you did. You were playing in a band that wasn’t worth playing in anymore, you lived in a flat turned into a crack house, you were screwing a junkie—”

“I  _ was  _ a junkie.” Klaus stares at him, and Diego wishes he’d brought his notes because this is seriously going off track and he’s pretty sure he’ll forget everything he was going to say unless he can find the way back to the speech he prepared. “I mean,” he stammers, even though his vocal cords seem surprisingly compliant now; it’s his brain that seems to be giving in, “we all were, but that’s including me. And you’re right, I was screwing you,” he can practically feel the gazes of all the people around them on the back of his neck, even though the  café  is empty except for a middle-aged woman and her son in the far corner, who are pretty clearly not listening, “but that’s only because I was a fucking asshole.”

“I’m not sure what you mean, but you really don’t—”

“I mean that I should have been your boyfriend.”

Klaus’ eyes are wide open now.

“What?”

“I should have been your boyfriend, not the guy screwing you.” Diego, finally, finds something he’s been planning to say. “And I should have given a fuck about what you wanted.”

“But you did!” Klaus says that loudly enough to make the woman and his son glance at them, but they lose interest quickly enough. “You did, you always did,” Klaus blabbers on, leaning over the table and taking Diego’s face in both of his hands, nearly swiping their drinks off in the process. “Remember all the things we did after the concerts? During the concerts?” Klaus laughs, but it’s more nervous than not. “Those were really great for me, Diego.”

“You don’t know that,” Diego says, shaking his head. Klaus furrows his eyebrows.

“What do you mean I don’t know that? I was there, wasn’t I? And so were you, and I was so lucky to have you there, because—”

“You don’t know that,” Diego repeats. He reaches for Klaus’ hands and takes them in his own, gently prying them away from his cheeks and pushing them down on the table, and then not letting go. “I don’t know that, either.”

“Why wouldn’t you—”

“Because I was high all the time. And so were you.” Diego looks down at their hands; they’re just a messy pile of skin and joints, tangled together so tight he couldn’t really find his own fingers if it wasn’t for Klaus’ cracked nail polish. “When I got together with Eudora—no, wait, Klaus, listen to me—when I got together with her, she had to explain to me what consent meant. It was a new thing for me.”

“Well, it’s not a new thing for me.” Diego tries to hold onto Klaus’ fingers, but he’s pulling away now, he’s clearly intending to pull away, and Diego supposes he shouldn’t really force him to stay while he’s the one talking about consenting to things. “It’s a really nice word for  really  nice people. The same people who will help Five win his competition if we make our song gay enough.”

“It makes sense, though.”

“What makes sense? Checking every second if you’ve done something wrong? Having to feel guilty if you have?”

“Not having to feel guilty afterwards,” Diego says quietly.

“Oh, I never feel guilty afterwards.” Klaus is laughing now, and it’s not the kind of laugh Diego likes to hear from him.

“I do.”

Klaus sighs, and he sighs for a long time.

“Diego,” he says. “I’m over it. I got through the worst of it in, like, two weeks. It was a really, very, deeply shitty two weeks, but that’s behind me now. Let’s just leave it there now, okay? You should be out there, looking for your police lady, not wasting your time on whatever you think this conversation is.”

“My police lady,” Diego says, and good god that sounds wrong, but he’s not going to change Klaus’ words, “had a very good reason to break up with me. I’m not going to waste my time on whatever you think I’d have to do to win her back.” That makes Klaus wince, and Diego doesn’t even know which part of it; but it might just be the fact that they’re still talking about Eudora. He changes that now, taking a deep breath and leaning closer, trying to get Klaus to look into his eyes again. “Hey,” he says, as softly as he only can, and Klaus actually lifts his gaze at that; his eyes open wide, his lips quivering for a moment before he presses them together to stop it, “you have a very good reason not to want to talk to me, too. It’s like you said at the concert. I did leave without trying to talk to you. I did let you worry for months before I texted you again.” God, that sounds even worse now that he’s saying it out loud. He can feel the muscles in his hands twitch, then is his throat, too, and there doesn’t seem to be much he can do about it. “What I’m trying to say is,” he says, quickly, before his own mouth could prevent him from doing so, “that I’m s-sorry. And that you deserve an explanation, so if you w-w-want it—”

He lets the end of the sentence trail off into silence; it’s not like he’d be capable of finishing it anyway. It’s frustrating, to know how much more he should be saying and to  be unable  to even try  and  phrase it right; and his face must be giving away how frustrating it really is, because he can suddenly feel Klaus’ cold palms against his cheeks, and Klaus is holding his head, turning it gently towards himself, in his own attempt to maintain eye contact.

“That is very nice of you,” he says, slowly. Diego manages one half of a smile. “But the fact that it upset me when I saw you, like this,” he glances over Diego and Diego, at first, doesn’t even realize what he’s looking at; he’s wearing the same black clothes he always did; well, not the same, he’d been told not to wear anything that might remind him of the times back then so he threw those away, then bought these identical ones; then he realizes Klaus is searching for the knives.

“Oh,” he says, quietly. Klaus nods, something like a smile hiding in the cornet of his lips. A smile, but not a happy one of that.

“Yeah. It was strange, and I was high, and I got upset about it.” Diego wants to point out that he’s high right now, too, but he doesn’t. He assumes Klaus knows his  own  variety of  reactions to his own variety of  pills well enough. “But that’s done now, okay? Let’s just practice for Five’s stupid competition and forget about all of it.”

No, it’s not okay.

“Sure,” Diego says, mustering another smile, and Klaus nods in response.

“Okay,” he says, and then he’s standing up and walking to the door, the rest of his drink untouched on the table; and the thing Diego only realizes when he’s gone is that he was really, really anticipating another kiss goodbye.

*

It’s not easy to get up and go home after that. It’s not any easier to  get himself to do the cleaning he’s supposed to do, to cook the dinner he’s supposed to eat, to finish the workout he’s supposed to enjo y. It’s really fucking hard to fall asleep.

He does, eventually, after a few hours of lying  on his back, staring into the darkness between himself and the ceiling,  not moving even though  his muscles are aching to. And he does the next night, too , after having gone through the same procedure, nerve-racking as it is; so it’s only natural that he gets a  phone call  sometime between two and very fucking early in the morning . He wakes up to the sound but he hardly opens his eyes as he fumbles around on the floor to grab  the  phone,  he only squints at the screen for long enough to find the right button, and he picks up without checking who’s calling him.

“Yeah,” he says, hi s voice rough with sleepiness, even to his own ears.

“Hey, it’s me.” It’s a woman’s voice. Diego furrows his brows and pulls the phone away from his ear and in front of his face to loo k at it again. He actually reads the caller ID this time.

“Allison?”

“Yeah, sorry for calling you this late. Were you sleeping?”

Diego swallows a grunt before it could escape his throat.

“I’m not anymore.” He forces  a tone into his voice that he hopes  will make him sound a little more, like, alive. “What’s up, sis?”

“Klaus,” Allison says.

Okay, Diego is awake now.

“What is it with Klaus?” he asks, quickly; eyes wide open and  hand reaching for the light switch; already sitting up and  pushing a foot into his jeans by the time Allison answers.

“He just called me. ” She sounds hesitant, like she  doesn’t know  if she’s supposed to be telling this to Diego. Diego begins tying his shoelaces,  phone held tight between ear and shoulder.

“What did he say?”

Allison sighs before  responding.

“He asked me to call you,” she says, then. “He gave me an address.  I think he wants to see you, like, right now . ” Diego takes a breath to thank her and say goodbye, he’d just be putting on his jacket if he had his hand free, but Allison suddenly decides to go on. “I’m not sure if this is a good idea,” she says. “I mean, it’s the middle of the night. Maybe you two could just stick to seeing each other under, you know, a little more  ordinary circumstances ? ”

That ’ s a much nicer way  of expressing the  exact  same thing  as  what  Five said  yesterday.  Diego still doesn’t like it  that much, though.

“ I can handle this,” he says before Allison could add anything else that might be less nicer than  the first version.  “Just text me the address.”

“Diego—”

Diego  hangs up before she has a chance to finish  that .

Allison does text him the address. She texts him a couple of other things, too, mostly words of  worry and advice, but Diego decides not to waste his time reading the m. He puts his phone on silent before getting into his car an d turns up the volume on the radio instead. He can’t really hear the music  over the sound of the blood drumming in his ears, but likes the idea of  it  numbing him a little anyway.

He gets to the place fast enough,  leaving his car in a not nearly  orderly position on the sidewalk and rushing into the building. It’s a tall building, with a front door that  once may have had glass between its rusty bars  and with a staircase that smells like it’s seen more than its fair share  of all kinds of bodily fluids; and that’s all Diego registers because then he’s too busy running up the stairs. He’s out of his breath by he time he gets to the top— at least it’s the top floor that he’s looking for,  and that’s, thank god, not that easy to miss —but he doesn’t stop there to catch it. He marches straight through the corridor, finding a sticky light switch on one of the walls  and glancing around in the dim light, until he  finds the right door.

He should probably knock. He doesn’t. He pushes the door open instead—it’s not even locked, for god’s sake—and takes a step inside.

“Klaus?” he calls,  feeling a bit of worry when he realizes that the flat  he’s entering is completely dark. When he doesn’t get an answer, he repeats it, louder this time. “Klaus !”

“Oh, hey!” A light goes up somewhere inside the flat, and Diego walks towards it, his steps maybe a little hesitant. The light’s peering through a door; it’s open ajar already so Diego  opens it properly and glances inside.

The thing he sees resembles a bedroom pretty closely, except maybe for the fact that there ’ s no bed inside. There are two  mattresses lying on the floor, though; they are grey but Diego has a  feeling that they may have been white once , and he can only hope that Klaus is the only person in the flat, using both of them.

He  seems to be,  right now. He’s lying on top of them, both of them, sp rawl ed across the mattresses  and a little over the floor, limbs reaching from one far corner to another. When Diego arrives, he casts a shadow  over  his face and Klaus seems to notice that, even with his eyes closed ; because suddenly he’s rolling over to lie on his stomach, keeping his torso up on his elbows.

“Hi,” he says, voice much weaker than  the  previous time  he greeted Diego . “Sorry to bother you this late.”

Diego  doesn’t remember him ever saying sorry for such a thing before. He decides to worry about that later.

“Hi,”  he answers instead, and lets the door click shut behind his back.  He walks closer,  leaning forward slowly, crouching down entirely when he gets to the mattress. He’s still casting a shadow on Klaus and Klaus’ face looks strange in the dark; his  skin is so pale, more grey than white, that it literally melts into it, but his eyes are shining and it doesn’t look like a particularly healthy shine.  Strands of h is hair  are  falling into his face again, and when Diego allows himself to reach out and brush  them to the side, he can feel them  sticking to Klaus’ forehead, skin and hair both damp with sweat.

Something must change in his expression, because Klaus lets out a quiet chuckle , and he somehow manages to make it sound almost self- deprecating .

“All nice and wet for you,” he says with  one half of a grin, but his voice lacks the  flirtatious tone that normally comes with his jokes. His eyes lack the  conspira tori al  glow.  His face lacks—expression. It looks flat. It looks blank.

Diego huffs out a laugh anyway.

“Yeah, right,” he says. “What’s going on?”

And then  Klaus smiles at him, he actually smiles, and it’s a tired smile but a smile nonetheless; and in the next moment, Diego very nearly chokes on  his own tongue.

“I’m  sobering up,”  is what  Klaus announces.

“What?”

“I’m sobering up.”

Diego , not quite intentionally,  sits down , landing on the floor with  the  seriously disgraceful rise  of his  legs  and a loud thud.  Klaus’ smile turns into a grin.

“Okay,” Diego says, trying to scrape  himself up from the floor, at least himself if he can’t do anything about his pride ; then giving up entirely.  “Okay, man.  How do you want to do this?”

“I have no idea.” That starts out as a sentence and ends up  sounding an awful lot like a whine. “I flushed a bunch of pills down the loo  and tried to go to sleep, but it’s not working.”

“No, I suppose not.” Diego thinks of his own first attempt at getting clean, and shivers quite literally.  “So, do  you need help?”

“The question is, do you know how to help?”

Klaus may have meant it as a joke, because he  curves his lips into  another sad grin and seems genuinely surprised when Diego doesn’t join him in that . He  pulls a hand from underneath his chin to poke Diego in the chest with it.

“ Come on, Diego,  get  your brain  back  here,” he says.  Diego catches the hand and wraps  his own around it.  Klaus’ eyebrows arch up high. “ That’s a very sentimental look on your face,” he says, his voice almost warning.

Diego murmurs something , but it's something with zero  words ,  in agreement.

“I’m not sure how to help,” he admits, then. Klaus glares at him.

“What do you mean you’re not sure how to help? You’ve been telling me for, like—okay, you’ve  only  been  t elling me for a day, but you’ve been telling me to sober up. Being all  serious and superior,” the  S long and harsh under Klaus’ tongue, “ being all you-know-what-you’re-talking-about,  you-ha v e -been-through- all- this , you—”

“I know,” Diego interrupts. Klaus actually shuts his mouth in surprise. “I know,” Diego repeats, more softly this time. “ But it was—different for me. I went to therapy. I was in a—in a  controlled environment, you know? I did it the usual way.”

Klaus scoffs . Judging from the way he’s wrinkling his nose, he’s still not quite content with where the conversation is going.

“I don’t have time for the usual way.”

“Okay.” Diego gestures for him to move and Klaus does, he wiggles his hips until there’s some space on the mattress beside him , and then he pats said space with an open palm. Diego crawls on the mattress and lies on his back,  arms folded under his head.  He turns his  chin  to look at Klaus; he has to squint a little to be able to focus on his face.  “Why don’t you have time?”

Klaus ’ arms are suddenly on both sides of him, one thrown over Diego’s chest—Diego doesn’t dare move, or speak, or breathe, or in any other way acknowledge  its presence—.  the other  down on the floor; and he lets himself fall  onto  his chest. His face is pressing into the mattress , and when he starts talking, his words are also swallowed in it.

Diego snorts despite himself. Klaus turns his  head  until  only one of his cheeks is wrinkled under the weight of his head.

“Did you just snort at me?”

“Of course not.” Diego grins at him, and Klaus  displays an expression of complete outrage. “Keep talking.”

“I said I  spoke  to Vanya,” Klaus says. Diego raises an eyebrow at him.

“You did?”

“Yeah. Yeah, and it was,” Klaus  pauses for a second, like he’s searching for the right word to use, “it was great, you know.  She was really nice to me, considering everything she’s been through.”

Diego thinks of all the things everyone else has been through , and then doesn’t say a word about it.

“Okay,” he nods instead. “And?”

Klaus sighs, very visibly and very audibly. He rubs his eye—the one that’s not stuck between his head and the mattress —with the hand that has, to this point, been over Diego’s chest,  then puts his arm down on the mattress between them.

“And she said she’d come play with us  if I  got clean.”

Diego’s eyes widen in surprise, and he doesn’t even know which part of that sentence is freaking him out so much. He sits up, and Klaus follows with a  quiet chuckle, pushing himself up on his knees and sitting down on his heels.

“She what?”

“Yeah.” Klaus  extends an arm towards Diego’s face, and for a second, Diego almost believes he’s going to  touch him. Klaus loudly snaps his fingers instead. “Still with me?”

“Sure.” Diego tries to pull himself together. “So then what, you came home and threw away all your shit , and that’s it?” Klaus doesn’t start nodding fast enough, and Diego furrows his brows. “ Not all of it, huh?”

“No, I—” Klaus tries, already climbing to his feet because Diego is standing up too, walking through the room with long, heavy steps.  “No, wait, don’t do that.” Klaus catches his arm and squeezes it hard, and Diego stops.  Klaus is staring at him with  a n  intensity  he hasn’t  seen from him  over the past week.  “I was thinking it might help me get through the worst of it, knowing that there’s alwa ys  a way back . Just to be sure, you know? It won’t hurt anyone, I won’t even put my hands on it, it just calms me down  to think that it’s in here and—”

Diego lifts an eyebrow at him. Klaus swallows  hard.

“And  if anyone, I should do it.”

Diego puts a hand on Klaus’,  patting him gently before prying his  fingers away from his arm.

“That’s the spirit, baby.”

*

Klaus finds two more plastic bags in an inside pocket of a very old and very purple coat, and another one on a bookshelf, hidden under a half-burned candle. It’s not hidden all that well, to be honest. The candle is standing in a seriously unbalanced position until Klaus takes the bag from underneath it. He also grabs a plush toy for a second—it's white and  blue  and shaped a n awful  lot like a unicorn, and Diego could swear it’s the very  same  unicorn Klaus has had since before he was adopted—but he puts it down quickly enough , flashing  an innocent smile at Diego in the process. Diego lifts an eyebrow at him but he doesn’t say a thing. Klaus goes to the bathroom with the three packets and flushes the toilet; Diego doesn’t go to check if he’s really thrown them into it beforehand. He lies back down instead, his whole body relaxing into the mattress, and while listening to the snaps Klaus’ footsteps on the tiles, he realizes he’s not far from falling asleep right there.

He smiles to himself, shaking his head in disbelief. He’s still busy doing that when Klaus gets back to the room, and only stops when he hears Klaus’ voice.

“What?” he asks. Diego rolls over so he’s lying on his stomach, and puts his hands under his chin.

“Nothing,” he says, shaking his head again. “Come back here.”

Klaus does; he takes up the whole space that isn’t already taken by Diego at first, but then he decides to lie on his side instead, knees pulled to his chest and hands resting over them, facing Diego.

“What was it like for you?” he asks, voice quiet. Diego turns his head to look at him.

“What was what like?”

“Sobering up. Did you feel this—” the sentence breaks in half as Klaus shudders, “this weird thing when you’re so awfully cold but also sweating and, like, feeling like your chest’s compressed all the time?”

Diego thinks about it for a second.

“Some of it, yeah,” he says. “I also had headaches. Real bad headaches, I mean. I couldn’t get a good night’s sleep for months because of them.”

“For months?” Klaus sounds panicked, like he’s considering rushing to grab his plush unicorn right now. Diego corrects himself quickly.

“I don’t mean that it takes months to feel better,” he says. “It’s  gonna  be okay in a week. A few weeks, maybe. It was something like ten days for me. Only the headaches remained for longer.”

“A few weeks,” Klaus murmurs. “That doesn’t sound so bad.”

It’s bad enough.

“It,” and Diego stops right there. “It’s doable,” he manages then, and hopes that Klaus won’t hear the uncertainty in his voice.

This isn’t exactly how he imagined Klaus sobering up. He imagined people around him, people who could actually help instead of watching nervously as he goes through all the withdrawal symptoms possible. But—and he takes a deep breath as he thinks of that, trying to make himself focus, trying to make himself relax—he's going to work with what they’ve got.

He blinks a few times, trying to get his attention back to Klaus. Klaus is still looking at him when he finally succeeds, eyes wide with a curious shine in them.

“Tell me about the police academy,” he says, and Diego lets out a quiet sigh.

“There isn’t much to tell,” he says. “I wasn’t the best student, you know. Hated the rules. Hated the idea of paperwork. Hated giving up a fight while the other guy was still breathing.” Klaus inhales sharply, the air rushing through his teeth with a loud hiss, and Diego pulls the corner of his mouth into a helpless grimace. “Yeah, I forgot to do something about that before applying.”

“Ouch.”

“I also went and got drunk after I got kicked out.”

“Double ouch.”

“Yeah.” Diego swallows hard, his nose suddenly full of the memory of all the scents at Klaus’ concert, of the clean alcohol, of the sweet mixers, of the sour breath of the people drinking both of those. “You know what’s the worst? Not being able to down a single shot because you’re too afraid you might not be able to stop there.”

Klaus chuckles, the sound more nervous than amused.

“Are you sure this is the right time to tell me about all that?”

“Nope. But you might want to know what you’re getting into.”

“Oh, that’s right, I do.” Klaus rolls onto his back, staring at the ceiling with the same wide eyes as before. “You said you went to rehab twice.”

“Yeah, I had to. Couldn’t stop after the first shot and began drinking regularly soon after. And then I thought,” Diego winces before he can go on, “if I’m screwing up anyway, why not screw up in a way I like? And there came the pills again.”

“And the fighting,” Klaus adds.

_ There we go. _

“And the fighting,” Diego nods. “I was hooked on that, more than on any of the other shit.”

“More than on your girlfriend, I assume.” Diego glares at him and Klaus shrugs. “I’m pretty sure that I’ll be spending this whole night awake, you might as well tell me something exciting before you fall asleep and leave me to suffer alone. You wanted to talk about her anyway.”

Klaus’ tone is getting more and more defensive as he speaks, even though Diego concentrates really hard on not making any faces at him. He lifts an eyebrow when Klaus is finished, though.

“Sounds like somebody’s jealous,” he says, grinning. Klaus folds his arms in front of his chest, his lips pressing together in a highly offended pout. He doesn’t retort, though, so Diego decides to start speaking. He did want to talk about her anyway.

“We met at the academy,” he begins, watching carefully if Klaus’ face changes the least bit. It doesn’t, so far. “We got together after I was kicked out because she wouldn’t talk to me before. I annoyed her like hell.”

This time, Klaus’ face does change, long enough for him to snort; and then his lips end up in a grin instead of the previous grimace.

“I bet you did,” he nods knowingly, and for a second, Diego seriously ponders if this is the cue that it’s his turn to pout.

“She was curious why I got kicked out, so we began talking the day I left. And then, I guess things just clicked.” Klaus lifts his eyebrows at him, in one quick motion this time, more flirty than questioning; and Diego bursts out laughing. “Come on, they did.”

“Yeah, yeah, okay.” Klaus waves the whole thing away with a lazy hand. “So when you started fighting?”

“I kept it a secret. Obviously. But you can’t really keep it a secret after a while. When you’re constantly complaining about your sore muscles, when the bruises start appearing, when you suddenly have a split lip and can’t explain where you got it—”

“When you get home and smile wider than you have any reason to,” Klaus takes over suddenly. He glances at Diego, as if to check if what he said was correct, and Diego is quick to nod. “When you hiss awkwardly if anything brushes against your ribs. When you’re so tired at night that you fall asleep before you could be of any use in bed.”

Diego shoots him a questioning glance, and Klaus shrugs.

“I used to live with you when you first started.”

Diego manages a smile, even though the memories are suddenly too many, too many and too bright, golden in the afternoon sunshine, and Klaus is dancing above him and his wrists are tied to the bed; and he swallows hard before he’s back to the cold little room with the greyish mattresses.

“I went to rehab,” he goes on. “Again. To another place, a better one, I guess. I had a new therapist—I had a couple of new therapists, actually, because I wanted to talk to more than one person and they let me. I did group therapy. They taught me to talk about my fights as if they were actual drugs.” He shifts so he’s lying on his side, and now he can look at his fingers while he moves them around lazily. “That helped.”

“That’s—weird,” Klaus says, dreamily. Diego snorts out a laugh.

“How about you?” he asks then. “Still cold?”

“Yeah, but still haven’t puked. That’s not too bad, I guess.”

“No, that’s pretty good.”

They stay silent for a minute. Another minute, then; it stretches on for longer and longer, until Diego can feel his eyelids get heavy and his thoughts turn gooey, and he slowly begins drifting into sleep.

“Hey,” he murmurs, reaching over to touch Klaus’ hand that’s now resting on his chest. “I’m  gonna  fall asleep, but wake me up if you need me, okay?”

Klaus’ fingers find their way in between his, and then his hand is moving, lifting Diego’s to his mouth, and he presses his lips against his knuckles.

“Okay,” he says. Diego doesn’t hear that all that clearly over the sound of his own thoughts. They’re not  too  refined but they’re expressive enough; they sound an awful lot like a victorious howl. He squeezes Klaus’ hand a little and Klaus’ lips pull into a smile, still moving against Diego’s skin.

“Good night,” he murmurs quietly. Diego has a feeling that this is going to be one really good night indeed.

He’s not so sure about that anymore when he wakes, thirty minutes and a way too short period of deep, dreamless sleep later, to a sweat-covered Klaus clutching to his hand in his sleep,  squeezing it  hard enough to make Diego hiss in pain before he’s even opened his eyes. Klaus is trembling  when Diego looks at him  and so are his lips, forming words Diego doesn’t understand, teeth bare and eyes clenched shut; and he moves closer when Diego finally manages to wake him, burying his face into Diego’s chest. The next time they are awake, Diego goes to fetch a bucket, and Klaus is nice enough not to throw up until he’s back. The next time, Klaus is whimpering about Ben, and Diego has a very hard time trying not to freak out while he’s shaking Klaus  back to reality . He loses track of their short periods of being awake and  their  even shorter periods of finally going back to sleep after that.

*

The next week is hard; harder than Diego remembers his own first week to be. The shivering and the vomiting and the waking up from nightmares, sweating and panicking, hugging Diego close while he’s trying to put a clean towel under them doesn’t seem to falter, and there are moments when Diego actually wonders if getting Klaus sober all of a sudden was a good idea. It wasn’t, probably, it’s getting clearer and clearer that they should have chosen a different way to go about it; but Klaus seems unwilling to give up now, shushing Diego every time he tries to suggest something a little farther  away  from pure torture. So Diego stays there with him at night and only sneaks out in the mornings, when Klaus is too exhausted to be w o ken up from his nightmares anyway; he goes to check his own room and does the cleaning up in a hurry; and he also brings fresh food and clean clothes—his own clothes, clothes that are way too big for Klaus but they’re getting changed constantly anyway, for being damp with tears and sweat and, a few times, piss as well. Klaus jokes about it but Diego hears something like disgust in his voice and he does not once manage to smile.

And, even though Diego has no idea how and why, they make it to Saturday.

They set an alarm for that morning, a thing Diego hates himself for before he goes to sleep in the evening and whenever he wakes up during the night. But, he figures, it wouldn’t do any good if he just turned it off and let themselves oversleep. With the state Klaus is in, they wouldn’t be getting a minute of rest anyway. So the alarm goes off at half past seven and the second thing Diego does is turn it off while swearing under his breath; because the first thing he has to do is hug Klaus close and whisper words he hopes to be calming into his ear. Klaus hasn’t been woken by anything other than his own nightmares since he started flushing his pills—he's been flushing additional packets over the course of the week, his expression always a little shy but never actually trying to hide it from Diego; he hasn’t gotten to the plush unicorn yet—and they had a short discussion last night about how frightening it might be for him to jerk awake and find that the noise that woke him up still hasn’t stopped. Now, with Klaus’ fragile little form pressed against his chest, his breath hot and frantic on the bare skin of his neck, Diego fucking hates that they were right.

“That’s just the alarm,” he mutters, his own head as dizzy with sleep as Klaus’ must be with everything else, “it’s okay, baby, I’m here.” He reaches over Klaus, putting his weight on top of him a little and hoping to god he won’t crush him, and presses his fingers against random points of the phone screen he can’t really see from this angle until the alarm finally stops. It leaves behind an empty silence, and in that silence, Diego’s ears are still ringing with its blaring sound when Klaus finally stops shaking.

“Hey,” he murmurs against the crook of Diego’s neck, and he shifts a little, nuzzling into the space some more. Diego strokes a lazy hand against his back, tracing the sharp edge of his spine with his palm.

“Hey,” he murmurs back. “Ready for your big day?”

“Hell no.” Klaus chuckles against his neck, the sound vibrating through Diego’s skin and sending something heavy and warm down into his stomach, something that feels really nice and familiar as well, something he’s felt quite a few times since he began sleeping over.

“Good,” he says, thinking of his guitar that he literally hasn’t touched over the past week, “neither am I. You  wanna  call Vanya?”

“Oh, yes. I almost forgot.” Klaus stays there for another moment, hugging Diego a little closer and taking a long breath, a flash of hope in Diego’s head telling him that he’s doing that to inhale  his scent and keep it in for a while, and he’s not sure if he’s supposed to wave that flash of hope away; and then Klaus is detangling his limbs from the sheets and from Diego’s and climbing off the mattress, standing up to fetch his own phone he left in the bathroom. He’s been keeping it there since they swapped the bucket for the loo so he could listen to music and muffle the sound of his own retching—it's not like it worked, Diego could hear everything while holding Klaus’ hair so he was pretty sure Klaus could too, but at least he had something a little more pleasant to focus on.

Klaus comes back to the room a few minutes and the sound of the shower running later, a towel around his hips, another in his hand; he’s rubbing his wet hair with that second one. He’s holding his phone against his ear, listening to the dial tone. His face says he’s been listening for a while now. Especially so when he rolls his eyes at Diego before turning away to rummage through his closet, freeing his hand by putting the phone between ear and shoulder.

Diego kicks the sheets off himself, getting to his feet and stretching his muscles in the process. He considers showering but decides not to waste his time on that; he had a shower last night, after all. He ignores the fact that, even though Klaus might be the one sweating the whole night, he’s most definitely the one cuddling Klaus the whole night, and, therefore, might not be much cleaner than him. He goes to the pile of clothes next to the wall, picking a pair of jeans and a sweater—he takes his time choosing them because Klaus is, finally, not there to peer over his shoulder and make fun of him for not being able to decide which ones of his identical pieces of clothing to wear; some of them are made of slightly different fabrics and are a little more loose or a little less stretchy because of that, and Klaus of all people should know how much of a difference that makes—and putting them on. He may have started sleeping in nothing but his boxers sometime around the middle of the week. Klaus didn’t seem to be bothered by it; not of the lack of clothes and not of the boners that became a whole lot more obvious because of that. It’s not like he had a lot of them, though, except for the occasional morning wood. Klaus almost naked in his arms was definitely a turn on. Klaus almost naked in his arms, trembling with panic and half-blind with exhaustion was definitely not.

By the time he gets dressed, Klaus finds something to put on, too. There’s a quiet, beeping sound, the sound of Vanya’s answering machine allowing Klaus to leave a message, and he begins talking in a voice that’s quick and hesitant at the same time. He says something about the time and place of the rehearsal and that he’s got something to show her; but Diego hardly registers the words because he’s too focused on the way Klaus is clutching at the phone, his face full of hope and worry and concentration. He imagines him calling Allison just a few nights ago, calling to tell her to talk to Diego; and he realizes something he should have realized much longer ago.

God, he’s so stupid.

“Klaus?” he begins when Klaus finally puts down the phone and grabs a shirt—a very sleeveless and very peach-colored shirt—to try and flatten out a little using his palms instead of an iron.

“Yes?”

“When you called Allison instead of me,” Diego says, and suddenly isn’t sure how to go on, “why did you do that?”

Klaus raises an eyebrow at him. He seems awake now, awake and sort of alive; like knowing that there’s an actual purpose to getting up today has made him feel that much better.

“I didn’t have your number, obviously. I tried to call you first but I only had the old one and you didn’t pick that up.” He stays silent for a second, his smile fading a little while he ponders over something. “A real bummer, considering that it was set at my emergency contact.”

Diego’s eyes open wide.

“It was?”

“Yeah, man.”

“Shit.” He feels a wave of panic wash over him—what if Klaus had gotten into trouble, more trouble than what he’s constantly in, and he couldn’t reach him because he turned his phone off and threw it away after sending Klaus that one apologetic text? —but it fades away slowly when he allows himself to think about it a moment longer. “Actually,” he begins carefully, and Klaus puts down the shirt to focus on him, “one of the reasons I stopped using that number was to prevent you from reaching me. Or anyone else,” he’s quick to add, “but I figured you’d be the only one to actually try and call. And you were.”

Klaus’ jaw drops, and this time, he doesn’t seem to be overacting the shock distorting his features.

“You knew I’d call and  you block ed me on purpose?”

“Yeah.” Diego takes a step closer and Klaus backs away, his bottom lip quivering and his eye shining with rage.

“Fuck you,” he says, his voice trembling but decisive.

“I’m sorry.” Diego takes a deep breath. He tries to imagine the shape of the words he wants to say, but it’s not working, not this time; these words have no shape and they have no color, these words only have an edge that’s going to cut at the very spots of Klaus’ mind he’s sworn never to touch again. “I’m sorry I let you d-down. But I’m n-n-not,” shit, that’s not going well, that’s not going well at all; he takes a deep breath so he can collect his thoughts and control his tongue and he knows he failed before he hears it, “I’m n-not sorry for s-staying away.”

Klaus glares at him, his eyes glimmering with—fuck, are those tears?

“I needed to do that for me,” Diego manages, trying to speak faster than what his stutter could catch up with , and failing quickly enough . “That was the first thing they told me, to change my number and my friends and the p-place I lived at. My w-workplace, too, that’s why I got a job. And it helped me, so I was thinking maybe you should—could do the s-same, if you want.”

Klaus shakes his head slowly, his eyes wide open is disbelief.

“I’m so fucking angry with you right now.”

And Diego wants to cry, too, he probably would if he had it in himself to allow it but he feels like that would be too much effort and ends up not even trying; but Klaus is crying now, he totally is, tears are running down his cheeks and snot is being sniffed back into his nose, and he outright refuses to talk to Diego on their way to Five’s place.

Diego thinks of the time they were at the small café with the mother and the kid and the shimmering iced coffee; he thinks of the time he refused to leave the house while it still had Mom in it; he thinks of all the times he got into a fight, not of the times when Klaus agreed with him, because of them both being high or because of his opponent being an actual asshole, but of the  times it was clear that Klaus wanted him to stay the fuck away from the whole thing; he thinks of all the times Klaus had every right to be angry and didn’t say a word. And then he thinks they are making progress. And then he wishes progress wouldn’t hurt just as bad as the lack of it.

*

When they get to the flat and open the door, they are faced with a scenario weirder than Diego would have  had  the power to imagine. Vanya is standing in the middle of the kitchen with everyone else surrounding her; Luther is grinning in a way Diego’s never seen him grin, and it seems very likely that Allison is, too, except she’s covering her mouth with both hands, and breathing heavily. And Five—well, Diego would say he’s been crying because there are the white traces of dried tears on his face and a wet tissue crumbled in his fist, but then again, he’s a little too frightened by the sight to even think something like that of him, something he might notice on Diego’s face and something that might cause him to start talking in his usual condescending way. The tone he normally uses, combined with the tears and the tissue—now that would be a thing that could freak the shit out of Diego.

He glances at Klaus. He’s not crying anymore, he must have stopped at some point while they were on their way, during the time when Diego didn’t even dare look at him; he seems astonished instead, but not astonished enough to return Diego’s awkward smile. He doesn’t even return the glance, to be completely honest.

“Uh, hi,” Diego says. Everyone in the room turns towards him. He’s focusing on Vanya, though—Vanya, who’s looking at Klaus instead of him, Vanya, whose lips curl into a soft smile, a small one at first, then growing wider and wider; Vanya, who steps out of the triangle the others are forming around her and extends her arms towards Klaus.

“Did you?” she asks with genuine surprise in her voice, and Klaus nods, and then he nods again but with his face buried in her shoulder this time, because Vanya wraps her arms around him after the first nod and pulls him into a hug so tight it seems like she’s not planning to let him go ever again.

“Yeah,” Klaus mumbles, and the rest of the siblings glance at Diego.

“What?” Allison mouths without letting a sound leave her lips, and Diego only nods, just like Klaus did; but, despite all the things the argument from half an hour ago is still making him feel, he’s grinning so wide his cheeks are slowly beginning to ache.

“Holy shit,” Luther says, and Vanya steps away from Klaus, keeping him at arm’s length to look him up and down. Klaus uses his newly acquired personal space to perform a curtsey; it’s a little awkward with Vanya still holding him by the shoulders, but it makes everyone in the room laugh in surprise nonetheless.

“Darlings, meet the new me,” Klaus says with a proud smile. “All clean and sobered up, and smelling like puke only a little.”

The laughter that follows is a little more awkward this time, but nobody says anything to criticize him.

The rehearsal goes well, with Vanya immediately getting what Klaus means when he’s talking about her violin competing with the rest of them; with Five presenting a real, actual, life-size grand piano he somehow managed to fit through the stairwell and the door and into the living room—when  Diego asks about it, he says he had to teleport from the instrument store back to his flat while holding it in his hands, and Diego, all things considered, is tempted to actually believe that—and Klaus sitting in front of it, playing and singing at the same time; with Allison only coordinating them for a while, then being asked to try and do the backing vocals and being fucking awesome at it. It’s over long before they could get tired of listening to their music, even though Five lets them stay an entire hour longer than he normally would, and when he finally mentions that he’s already late for work so they should probably go over the song one last time, then take a pause and meet again next week, all the faces in the room are turning towards the clock on the wall, then back to stare at one another in surprise. Some of them are panting. Most of them are.

“Don’t you guys want to meet earlier than that?” Vanya’s the first to say out loud what they’re all thinking—Diego is, at least, and he guesses the others are as well because four pairs of eyes light up upon hearing those words. “I skipped another rehearsal this week and I’m not sure if I can do that again, but I’m free tomorrow, if you are too.”

“I am,” Klaus responds before Vanya has the time to close her mouth.

“Yeah, me too,” Diego adds.

“I’m supposed to be—” Five begins, but he bursts out laughing when the others glare at him. “Jesus, guys, I’m joking. Tomorrow’s perfect.”

“Same for us.” Luther glances at Allison, and she nods in agreement.

“This was nice,” she says instead of repeating the same thing the others did, and there’s nodding and humming and straight-up grinning at one another until Five asks them to please not make him be even more late.

*

They say their goodbyes down on the street this time, standing in front of the building for much longer than what would be necessary, but it doesn’t feel all that long. Five’s the first to leave, cursing the others under his breath as he rushes to his car but starting it awfully slowly and turning back to wave over his shoulder until he disappears behind the next corner. Vanya excuses herself soon, too—not all that soon, to be honest, but sooner than Luther and Allison do—and runs away to catch a taxi that will take her to the other rehearsal she’s been talking about.

“We were planning to grab some lunch and go to the park,” Allison says when it’s only the four of them. “You guys could come if you want.”

“Yeah,” Luther agrees, and Diego glances at Klaus with his eyebrows raised. That  sounds  an awful lot like an invitation to a double date. Diego—well, if he’s honest with himself, he isn’t exactly opposed to the idea. But he lets Klaus answer and it’s a good thing he does, because Klaus shakes his head while offering Allison his brightest smile.

“We were going to go home now,” he says, finally turning to Diego to catch his glance; and there’s something in his eyes that’s ordering Diego to take him seriously so Diego nods as Klaus continues speaking. “But we could  do the lunch thing  tomorrow if you have the time.”

“Sure.” Allison steps to them, pulling Klaus into a hug, and Diego takes a deep breath while looking at Luther. He moves forward a little, not quite closing the distance between the two of them.  _ God, this is going to be awkward, _  he thinks; but then Luther opens his arms and, dear god, actually hugs him, Diego’s eyes opening wide as his shoulder is being patted by a large palm. He  lifts his own hands to do the same to Luther’s back, the area of it that he’s tall enough to reach, that is; then they both back away at the same time.

Allison is flashing her most radiant smile at them, and Klaus is very openly chuckling. They repeat the process with the roles mixed up a little, Allison kissing Diego on the cheek while she’s hugging him and Klaus squeaking quietly when his ribs are captured in Luther’s hold. He’s still chuckling, though, and Luther offers him an apologetic smile when he steps away.

And then Diego  has to  realize that he's standing alone with Klaus  in front of the building.

“So,”  he  says, scratching the back of his neck with a hesitant expression.

“So,” Klaus repeats. He doesn’t look like he’s going to say anything other than that, so Diego figures it’s his turn to speak.

“Do you want me to come home with you?” he asks after a long moment of consideration. Klaus also waits for a while before answering, and Diego can feel a hint of panic wash over him.

“I was wondering,” Klaus says, his tone careful, “if I could go home with you instead.”

Diego’s jaw drops quite literally.

“You mean, like, my place?”

“Do you call someone else’s place your home?” Diego actually considers answering that until he notices the smirk Klaus is flashing at him; and he ends up rolling his eyes quietly when he finally does.

“Why?” is the next thing he asks. Klaus’ smirk fades immediately. He doesn’t look sad, no, or not only; he also looks like he wants to be taken seriously. Diego hopes it’s visible on his own face that  yes,  he’s perfectly willing to give him that.

It might be, because Klaus actually answers the question.

“I thought about what you said,” he says, the words leaving his lips slowly. “About starting over with new people and at a new place. And I still think you’re a fucking asshole for not warning me about that, but I can see how that helped you.” Diego opens his mouth to speak but Klaus interrupts him before he could even begin. “I also think we should discuss that. You being an asshole, I mean. But it would be nice to have that conversation somewhere other than my room. Which is not strictly mine,” he admits with half a smile, and Diego resists the urge to  facepalm .

“So,” he says instead, “you  wanna  come home with me?”

Klaus steps closer to him, close enough so his chest touches Diego’s and Diego would swear he can feel the thumps of his heartbeat hard against his ribcage, if he could only decide whose heartbeat and whose ribcage that  is ; and he, slowly, slides a hand into Diego’s.

Diego figures it must be his heart, because it totally skips a beat.

“Can I?” Klaus asks back, and Diego lifts his free hand to cradle his face.

“Will you?”

He’s wondering about how long they’re planning to throw that same question back and forth when Klaus finally leans in to kiss him.

It’s soft at first, that kiss, soft as Klaus’ fingers against the back of Diego’s hand, soft as the way Klaus’ eyelids flutter close, Diego watches it before he closes his eyes as well; and then it’s not so soft anymore, it’s Klaus’ hot breath in his mouth and Klaus’ wet tongue over his lips and Klaus’ sharp teeth where his tongue was a second ago; and Diego slides his fingers into Klaus’ hair, yanking his head to the side, pulling him closer, pushing in deeper; and Klaus’ holding onto him with his nails sinking into skin now, into the skin on his wrist and into the skin on his waist, a hand sliding under his sweater so he can do that; and Diego can hear himself sigh into Klaus’ mouth at that, and he can feel Klaus grin against his mouth at that, and when he breaks the kiss, gasping for air while he rests his forehead against Klaus’, he realizes they’re both grinning.

Klaus leans forward again, pressing another, short kiss  to  his lips, and Diego shudders quite literally.

“Let’s go, then,” he murmurs, and Klaus’ expression is practically shining when he hears that.

“Yeah,” he says. “Okay.”

Diego makes sure they walk down the street hand in hand.

*

The next few weeks are spent in what anyone, including Diego, would call a purple haze, with him waking up next to Klaus in the morning—at night, too, because of the nightmares and the crying and the vomiting, but it’s finally beginning to get better, and Diego also doesn’t really mind waking up because of that—, with Klaus saying more words per second than humanly possible while doing his makeup, with Diego driving them both to rehearsal and saying hi to Luther in a way that’s slowly becoming less and less awkward, with Klaus insisting that they all have lunch together and succeeding in the majority of the cases, with Diego mopping the floors when they get home, with Klaus getting some sleep while he does that, with Diego cooking dinner, with Klaus offering to do the dishes, with both of them practicing together for the next day, repeating the same tunes over and over again, listening to the other to correct his mistakes but ending up only praising him most of the time, forgetting about what they’re supposed to do and beginning to play around instead, creating something new every day, never writing it down but always remembering. With them fucking against every relatively flat surface they can find in Diego’s room or outside of it. They figure that’s a thing they don’t mind keeping from the old times.

Diego decides he could get used to this by the time the day of the competition comes.

It begins differently than the rest of their days do—it begins, for Diego, without the annoying noise of his alarm. He wakes up to something entirely different and much more pleasant; it’s soft and warm against his cheek, the touch of fingertips first, the touch of lips after that.

“Hey there,” Klaus murmurs against his skin, and Diego would just love to open his eyes and stare at him with all the bliss and affection he feels in that moment, but he doesn’t really manage to do any of that.

“Hi,” he grumbles instead, turning to his side and away from Klaus, pulling the blanket over his head. Klaus stops the movement before he could finish it.

“It’s our big day today,” he says, his voice still amazingly quiet; Diego hopes to god it’s going to stay just like this .  “ Y ou should be getting up, big guy.”

Diego protests by growling some more, without using too many words this time. Klaus laughs at him softly and slides into the bed behind him, lifting the covers so he’s pressing against Diego without anything between them. His chest is warm against Diego’s back, and he doesn’t touch him with his feet , which  Diego knows to be mercilessly cold. Diego would be grateful for that if he was awake enough to be grateful.

“Come on,” Klaus goes on, his lips brushing against Diego’s ear. He puts an arm around Diego’s chest and Diego locks their fingers together, moving his hand as little as possible in the process. He opens an eye, expecting to be blinded immediately by the sunshine flooding the little room; but it’s surprisingly dark to be getting up.

“It’s early,” he says, closing his eye again. Klaus chuckles quietly, his breath in Diego’s ear sending goosebumps down Diego’s arms.

“Come here,” he murmurs and tries to turn Diego around, not giving up until Diego gives in and lies on his back.

“What?” he asks, glancing at Klaus. He feels a little less like his eyelids have been glued shut. Klaus climbs on top of him and kisses him instead of answering; or maybe that’s his way of answering, because one of his hands is sliding around Diego’s neck to press against the back of his head and tilt his chin upwards, the other one is sliding down Diego’s stomach to press against the boner he woke up with, and his lips are moving down Diego’s jaw, his neck, his chest, pressing wet kisses to his skin and making him lift his hips, thrusting lazily into Klaus’ hand.

Klaus squeezes his cock a little harder at that and Diego inhales sharply, his eyes opening wide so he can stare down at Klaus. Klaus, who’s now grinning up at him from somewhere around his nipples.

“Awake yet?” he asks, his eyebrows raised and his eyes shining, and Diego shakes his head with a smirk.

“Not nearly,” he says. Klaus sighs in response.

“Guess I’ll have to try harder, then.” And with that, he’s sliding further down the bed, pushing Diego’s thighs apart and settling between them, pressing a kiss to his cock that feels hot and wet even through the fabric of his boxers; and Diego’s still not quite awake, his head still feels dizzy, but that might be a whole different kind of dizzy now, one that’s black and blank and focused on all the things he’s feeling, one that bundles up in his stomach and warms up his chest, one that makes him let out a long sigh, making Klaus chuckle into his skin.

Diego reaches down, burying his fingers into Klaus’ hair, and Klaus glances up at him, lips parted and curling into a grin; and then he’s undressing him, sliding a finger under the waistband of his boxers and lifting his hips with a firm grab of his hand, and then Diego’s eyes roll back into his head and his head falls back onto the pillow, and Klaus chuckles again, his lips warm and soft around Diego’s cock, and Diego is clutching onto his hair with one hand and onto the sheets with the other, his mouth open for short, sharp breaths, his throat burning with long, rough moans, and his entire body shakes when he comes, the muscles in his thighs and his stomach and his fingers tensing, then, with a last groan, relaxing again.

Klaus climbs up, straddling him, cuddling him, and he presses his lips against Diego’s. He tastes like mornings do; he tastes sweet like his coffee and cool like  their  toothpaste and bitter like Diego’s  come, and Diego breathes out a little laugh, wrapping his arms around his waist and hugging him close.

“What was that for?” he murmurs, his lips brushing against Klaus’.

“I couldn’t go back sleep,” Klaus says, and he’s definitely grinning now, Diego can feel it against his own lazy smile, “and I was bored.”

Diego rolls his eyes at him and Klaus sits up, glancing at the window above them. Diego’s gaze follows his. It’s still dark outside, the sky a dark grey and the buildings even darker, but there’s a thin stripe of orange floating just over the horizon, disappearing behind houses and returning again through the streets.

“How much time until we have to get up?” Diego asks. Klaus lifts an eyebrow at him, his face turning questioning, but his tone isn’t exactly that when he speaks.

“A little more than an hour. Why,” he starts, but he sounds like he knows the answer already, “you got any plans?”

“Hell yes.” And Klaus must have guessed correctly because he’s laughing long before Diego has the time to sit up and kiss him and flip him over, and he’s laughing long after he’s come over both of their stomachs, and his face is glowing with sweat and smiles and the first rays of the morning sun when Diego moves back up to collapse over him and nuzzle into his neck.

*

The competition itself begins late in the afternoon but they get there early in the morning to spend the rest of the day rehearsing, so it’s no wonder that they’re all hungry and weary and on the very edge of throwing a tantrum by the time they have to start getting dressed. They get their own separate changing room—separate from the other performers, that is; the six of them are most definitely not separated.

Diego wishes they were.

People are running around all over the room, and it’s a room way too tiny for that much movement; Five is looking for the tie he lost sometime during the day, Allison is trying to get a look at the mirror Klaus is standing in front of, Vanya is still holding her violin, tuning it again like that isn’t the thing she’s been doing the whole day, and Luther—Luther is sitting in one of the corners, munching on a hot dog quietly.

Diego gets up from the chair he’s been sulking on—no, not sulking, just sitting with his legs crossed and his arms folded over his chest and his brows furrowed and his jaw clenched, contemplating in silence why the hell he decided to agree to this—and walks to Luther, dropping himself down on the bench next to him.

“Hey,” he says, his eyes still following the rest of his siblings, not turning to Luther.

“Hi.” Luther stays quiet for a second, there’s only the sound of biting and chewing and swallowing from his direction; and then suddenly he’s holding out a hand towards Diego, and there’s another hot dog in that hand.

Diego glances at him, but Luther is staring at the others.

“Here,” he says, moving his hand around a little, and Diego takes the food from him. “ It’s  gonna  make you  feel better.”

It  does.

“Have you thought about what’s next?” Luther asks when Diego’s finished. He was considerate enough not to talk while Diego was focused on eating, and Diego’s truly, deeply thankful for that. He makes sure Klaus isn’t watching—he isn’t, he’s busy leaning back in a chair with his eyes closed and his legs propped up on the dressing table in front of the mirror, letting Allison line his eyes with a brush that, weirdly enough, looks so thin it’s almost sharp—and he wipes his mouth clean on the back of his hand.

“Yeah, actually,” he says. “We’ve talked about it with Klaus.”

Luther’s head snaps towards him now, and Diego is surprised enough to return the gesture.

“You have?”

“Yeah. I mean, we  kinda  had to. Discuss if we were going to keep living together and all that.”

“And are you?”

Diego turns his gaze away, looking down at his lap with a smile.

“We are,” he says. “He says he wants to go back to his own band—the Séance, you know, the one with the weird smoky album covers—but not to being hooked on shit. We’ll see how that works out.”

He’s expecting a whole lot of things from Luther, but putting a large palm on Diego’s thigh and giving it a friendly squeeze is definitely not one of them.

“I hope it works out well,” Luther says, and Diego stops glaring at the huge hand in his lap so he can start glaring at the small smile on Luther’s face.

“Yeah, so do I.” He’s silent for a second and that seems to be making Luther’s smile falter; he even begins to withdraw his hand with a slow movement, too slow to seem natural, slow enough to seem like he’s trying to act  as if i t hadn't been  on Diego’s leg in the first place.

Diego, god knows why, doesn’t like the sight of that.

“I told him about using the right words,” he says, and Luther’s eyes widen a little in interest.

“The right words?”

“Yeah, about how you’re supposed to say you’re a recovering addict. Rather than a former addict,” he says, and Luther nods like he understands.

“So you’ve been told that too.” And it’s in that moment that Diego realizes that he’s not the only one who’s more or less worked his way out of a bunch of addictions over the years.

“Have you?”

“Yeah, but I didn’t listen. Not the first time around.” Luther laughs and it’s quiet and bitter and it reminds Diego of something he’s heard coming from his own mouth. “I was so sure I was done with all of it that I went to some party and got drunk. I thought that was fine because, you know, I’d been addicted to a whole array of drugs, but not to alcohol.”

“Yeah, and you also weren’t addicted to the drugs anymore.”

Luther stares at him, and he stares like he’s surprised.

“I did the same,” Diego explains with something that feels an awful lot like a smile. “That’s how I began round two at rehab. I didn’t even start by not putting anything in myself that time, they just kept insisting for weeks that I call myself an addict for the rest of my life. Someone who’s not currently using, but also someone who’s  gonna  start again the moment he gives himself the chance.”

“Same here. But that was Allison for me.” Luther snorts and Diego raises an eyebrow at him. “She gave me hell for messing up.”

“Oh, I can imagine that.”

They sit in silence a moment longer, legs stretched out in front of them, back leaning against the wall.

“And you?” Luther asks, then.

“I’ll try and find a new job. Learn  one , maybe.”

“Why, what do you do now?”

“Me?” It’s Diego’s time to snort now, but he doesn’t hesitate too long before answering. “I mop floors at a gym.”

“I’ve been doing research about the  Mo on,” Luther admits in return. At least he sounds like he thinks that’s a thing to admit, not a thing to be fucking proud of, and Diego stares at him in disbelief.

“I didn’t know that,” he says, “I thought you were just obsessed with it because it’s, I don’t even know, pretty—but come on, man, that’s awesome.”

“Yeah, well,” Luther shrugs, “nobody’s paying for it.”

“Shi t.”

“Yeah.”

And that’s when Allison finishes her work on Klaus, only for them both to spin around and, after a quick glance at their respective boyfriends, grin at one another. Allison winks at Klaus and Klaus claps his hands, and by the time Diego realizes what’s about to happen, it’s way too late.

“Uh-oh,” Luther says quietly. Diego nods in agreement.

“It’s uh-oh alright.”

And then they have their faces covered in all kinds of  things the others keep calling  makeup  products,  because they both share the feeling that Five is going to shout at them if they refuse.

*

Diego only realizes when they are walking up the stage, a heavy black curtain the only thing separating them from their audience and one of their opponents, audience still cheering and opponent still playing, that he’s never seen a single recording of The Commission. Not one where  they show the entire band in one frame, at least. Because he’s heard them play before—it was hard not to hear them play if there’s been a single time in your life that you turned on the radio—but he’s always assumed they did something after recording their songs to amplify the sound of each of the instruments. He definitely wasn’t counting on The Commission being a fucking orchestra.

“Shit,” he says now, eyes fixed on the astonishing amount of people in front of him; so many of them that they can hardly fit on the stage. From the very corner of his eyes, he can see Klaus’ jaw drop in surprise.

“It’s shit all right,” Luther says, and Diego would smile if he wasn’t so busy putting himself back together.

“You played with these people?” he asks, turning to Five; and the way Five shrugs seems sort of uncomfortable.

“Not my kind of music,” he says, and that’s just plain bullshit, because that thing, the thing The Commission is doing right now, has to be everyone’s kind of music. It’s light and bouncy like every popular song needs to be, but it’s also heavy where the more classical instruments are thrown in; and they are using that perfectly, balancing between something old and sober and almost timeless and something new and fresh and lasting only a moment, and Diego feels more helpless than jealous even though that’s not an easy thing to do.

The last tunes of the song fade away and the applause that comes after sounds like an explosion.

“We’re so screwed,” Allison says, but she doesn’t sound as frightened as Diego would expect her to  be . He glances at her, face questioning, and so do the others with their eyebrows raised and their mouths opened to say something.

Allison shrugs, then gestures towards the stage.

“I mean, they were awesome, weren’t they? But that doesn’t have to be bad for us.” She steps closer and suddenly everyone’s doing the same, closing the loose circle they’ve been standing in. Allison reaches out to hold the hands of the two people who ended up closest to her, it’s Vanya on one side and Five on the other; and Diego’s just locking his fingers with Klaus’ when he notices that someone’s tugging on his other hand as well.

It’s Five, who has, apparently, decided to  go with  the whole holding hands thing.

“Can you see that stage?” Allison goes on, and gets a few uncertain nods in return. “Actually, I’m pretty sure you can.  Now , o n that stage, we get to perform our song in less than two minutes. So I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling—” she almost gets interrupted by a member of The Commission who decides that striding across their small circle is the most practical way of getting off the stage; but she only tightens her grip around the hands she’s holding and goes on without the tiniest sign of having been disturbed in her voice, “I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling the most awesome I’ve ever felt.”

“You’re right,” Vanya says quietly, and looks around to meet everyone’s gaze, one by one. “This is our chance to prove that we can play together. Not to the people out there, but to—”

And this time, she does get interrupted by the storm of people rushing off the stage; a woman with impossibly straight hair and an even more straight spine bumping into Five seemingly on purpose, making Diego want to run and catch her and throw her to the ground; a man who  somehow reminds him of a teddy bear stopping him in his tracks when he says hi to all of them in an apologetic tone.

The circle breaks into smaller groups, into Vanya with the arms of Luther and Allison around her shoulders, into Five with his hands in his pockets, into Klaus and Diego, stepping a little closer to each other now, Diego putting his arm around Klaus’ waist, Klaus resting his head against Diego’s shoulder.

“Do you think we can do this?” Diego asks, quietly so the others can’t hear it. He’s not sure what he’s expecting for an answer, but then he  feels  surprised enough to know he got something entirely different.

“Oh yeah, baby,” Klaus says, his voice smooth and steady, and Diego turns his head to glance down at him.

“You sure?”

“Pretty sure.” Klaus stares at him, a wide smile on his lips and a bright shine in his eyes; one that begins at something strong and reassuring, one that ends up being a burst of laughter a second later. “I just watched you willingly hold Five’s hand, I’m pretty sure anything’s possible today.”

Diego rolls his eyes at him, fighting down the urge to smile and failing epically.

“You’re the worst,” he states categorically, and then Klaus is pulling him close by grabbing a handful of his sweater, and he’s kissing him on the lips, gently but still grinning, and Diego can’t help but let himself be kissed, their siblings and the staff of the competition and the last few members of The Commission a swirling cloud of bodies around them.

Klaus breaks the kiss, keeping his face close to Diego’s.

“We can do this,” he says, without grinning this time, and Diego can feel his own hand squeeze Klaus’ waist a little harder.

“Hell yes, we can.”

The entire room darkens, and in the very same moment, the stage lights up, turning bright and white as if on frozen fire. Diego steps forward to stand next to Vanya; they’re going to walk out from behind the curtains at the same time.

Luther is the first to enter and he enters alone, walking to his drums with heavy steps, and while he gets his share of applause, Diego leans down to place his chin on Vanya’s shoulder.

“Good talk, sis,” he whispers, trying to sound as earnest as he only can. Vanya jumps a little, then tenses her neck like she’s trying to turn and look at him, but Diego’s head stops her halfway through the movement.

“What do you mean?”

“The stuff you said before, when we were in the circle,” Diego tries to explain. “That was—nice.”

“Oh?” Vanya asks, and Diego nods, glad that he’s leaned in close enough for her to feel that because there’s not much they can see while standing on the border between the blinding light and the equally blinding darkness. “Thanks, Diego.”

And then they walk on stage, the light sharp in their eyes and hot on their skin, making their palms sweat while they grab their instruments—or maybe it’s just Diego’s palms that are sweating and maybe it’s not only because of the  reflector s, but then Allison appears along with Five, and then the room goes dark and everything goes quiet.

They figured that most people in the audience won’t be familiar with Klaus’ performances. They have decided they should be.

The fog rolls in before the lights go up again, soft and warm this time, nothing like the sharp white shine from before; and by the time it’s bright enough for anyone to make out their outlines, the stage is painted gray and blue, what Luther says he imagines the sunrise on the moon to be like; and Klaus is standing in the middle of it.

He’s been told by the organizers to wear shoes, and Diego can see them at the far end of the stage, where he kicked them off on his way in. He’s standing in the middle and in the front, so close to the edge of the stage Diego would fear he might fall down if they hadn’t gone over this a hundred times today, and even though he can’t see any of their faces, Diego knows that all the people in the audience must be staring at him, because damn, who wouldn’t stare at him at any given chance?

Vanya lifts the bow to her violin, and it begins.

It’s just a mess of sounds at first, really, it’s Vanya playing notes faster and higher than what would be comfortable to hear; it’s Klaus humming into the microphone, low and quiet and softly challenging the violin; and then, after the single heartbeat of silence after a high note from her and a low one from him, they all do something that feels a lot like coming to life, Diego can see Five’s cheeks get flushed with strain and he can hear, even over the sounds rippling around him, the way Luther’s already gasping for air; and there’s Allison, walking towards him and touching his shoulder gently, and he leans into her palm while she begins to hum along with Klaus, and then his restless fingers, finally, get to twist the way they’ve been aching to do.

The song is more of a tale; Diego realized this the first time he read it and now he’s realizing it again. It’s a tale about a planet, cold and empty in its grace, and it’s a tale about a man, old and lonely in that space; and the words that tell the tale are flowing from Klaus’ mouth, climbing high until they reach Vanya’s place; and all the sounds in the room collide then, a voice and another voice and the quick little squirms of the violin, and Diego shivers when they do. But the song is more of a tale, and the tale goes on even after that; it descends into a void Diego can almost see if he squeezes his eyes shut hard enough; and that’s what he does now, his hands resting against the guitar; he lets himself slip away and along whatever path the others are pulling him down, and the next time he has to add his own tunes is only after they’ve arrived, it’s only when they’re back down on Earth; and the stage is all the shades of gold now, heavy and rich and fluid as the  reflectors  shine down on them; and it goes dark right when Klaus collapses with his gaze turning blank.

And then it’s over.

Diego expects some kind of feedback, to be completely honest; not a lot of it, but maybe, just maybe a bit of applause. But the entire room stays silent, with only the last notes of the song ringing in his ears, and he wants to let out a sigh as he walks towards Klaus to help him up. He doesn’t let it out, though, he’s not quite ready to accept their failure just yet; but he’s surprised anyway when he’s faced with a wide smile on Klaus’ lips as they grab each other’s wrist and get them to his feet.

“Look at them,” Klaus mouths, or that’s what Diego understands it as; even with only a few inches between them, it’s not that easy to read the words from his mouth in the sudden darkness following the shine of the  reflectors ; and he glances out at the audience when the light, slowly, goes up again.

Now that he’s standing so close to the edge of the stage, his eyes are almost fully covered by the shadows, and he can finally see the faces underneath them. And they look—strange. A whole lot like they’ve just seen a ghost, except Diego’s not sure what people look like after seeing a ghost, and he also doesn’t think that an experience like that is usually followed by sudden and loud cheering, shouting and applauding and jumping up from their seats.

That’s what they do now, though. In the very moment that they have registered that Klaus is, in fact, alive.

Diego feels frozen, frozen by the faces getting distorted in front of his eyes, distorted by mouths opening to scream  and  distorted  by  lips pressing together to whistle; and he hardly even registers that Klaus has put an arm around his waist and so has Allison, he wouldn’t even know when to bow if it wasn’t for Klaus and the scathing little pressure of his  nails  between Diego’s ribs.

They wait for their scores, then, not letting go of each other; and the room gets even louder when they get them, but that’s a different kind of loud now, that’s more complaining than cheering, because it only takes a second of calculating to realize they ended up a not-even-that-close second.

Diego can feel his own face drop, his grin from just a second ago turning into something halfway between a pout and a snarl. He turns his head to look at Klaus, expecting to see the same thing; but Klaus’ shining eyes tell him that he’s still in surprised awe, and so do his arms when he breaks free from the line they’ve been standing in and wraps them tight around Diego’s neck, pulling him into a hug and pressing a loud kiss to his cheek.

“We did it, big guy,” he’s saying, “we did it for real!” And Diego’s not sure what’s going on because everyone around him is acting like that, hugging and kissing and laughing into each other’s ears; Luther gathers Allison up in his arms and spins around while her legs are kicking wildly into the air; Five is smiling proudly up at Vanya; Klaus is letting him go and rushing to Luther to snatch Allison from him, covering her forehead in a ton of kisses; Vanya is stepping to Luther to hug him with one arm, awkwardly, up until he lets out a weary sigh and lifts her up like he did with Allison, making her giggle and scream and try to escape; and that means Five is left alone for a second, so Diego goes to him.

“Hey,” he begins, not sure what to say. Five seems surprised that he’s not cheering along with the others.

“Hey,” he answers.

Diego looks down at his feet, then back at his siblings—they've changed partners again, Allison is hugging Vanya and Klaus is balancing on his tiptoes to try and ruffle Luther’s hair, ignoring the fact that it’s way too short to be ruffled properly. He clears his throat.

“Uh, Five,” he says. “I’m sorry we couldn’t help you win this thing.”

And Five does the last thing he’d expect from him, because he rolls his eyes at first—that's not all that surprising in itself, to be honest—but then he steps Diego and pushes him gently, catching him off guard and almost making him stumble over his own foot.

“Jesus Christ, Diego,” he says. “You’re still awfully slow on the uptake, aren’t you?”

Diego blinks at him a few times, contemplating the question.

“Maybe,” he says after a while, making Five huff out a short laugh. “Did we win? Did I miscalculate?”

“Of course we didn’t!” Five snaps, shaking his head. “But did you really think that was the point?”

Diego can’t think of anything else to do, so he blinks again.

“I mean, you’ve been talking about this competition since—”

“Since I decided I missed my family, yes.”

Diego glares at him, and Five, suddenly, seems embarrassed.

“I wanted to bring us to a point where we talk to each other again,” he says, reddening up to the tip of his ears. Diego catches himself finding that adorable, but decides not to say that out loud. “Look at them now. Could you imagine them like this before we started practicing again?”

Diego follows his gaze to Klaus’ hands, trapped tightly in Vanya’s.

“No,” he admits. “I don’t think so.”

“That’s right.” Five pats his arm awkwardly, but his expression tells Diego he means well when he does that. “Don’t say that we didn’t win, then.”

And Diego doesn’t say that they didn’t win, and there isn’t much else he says, either; because he’s winking at Five now and walking away, walking towards Klaus who’s just let go of Vanya to go and search for him.

“There you are,” he says, voice cheerful and arms thrown into the air; and Diego reaches under them and around his waist, lifting him into the air and kissing him on the mouth; and Klaus’ palms are against his face and Klaus’ legs are around his hips, and he knows he could have waited a little  longer  and done this somewhere else, someplace where the entire audience can’t see them; but he also knows he couldn’t find a good enough reason to do that.

**Author's Note:**

> leave a comment if you feel like it!
> 
>  
> 
> [this is where I hide all evidence of my Kliego obsession](http://stuckinthosefandoms.tumblr.com/)


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